Formatting with echo command

Question

The actual situation is a bit complicated, but the issue I'm running into is that I have an echo command within an eval command. Like so:

$ eval echo 'keep   my     spacing'
keep my spacing
$ echo 'keep   my     spacing'
keep   my     spacing

I was wondering how I could keep eval from stripping my spacing so that the first command prints out the same message as the second...

---

Here's a closer example to what's actually going on:

$ eval `python -c 'print "echo \"keep    my     spacing\""'`
keep my spacing

Answer 1

eval echo "'keep my spacing'"

Answer 2

eval "echo 'keep   my     spacing'"
keep   my     spacing

If that does not work for you, please explain more about the actual situation.

Answer 3

It's not the fault of eval:

`python -c 'print "echo \"keep    my     spacing\""'`

prints

"keep my spacing"

Instead you could do this:

python -c 'print "echo \"keep    my     spacing\""' | bash

This prints

keep    my     spacing

Answer 4

or consider printf -v

Answer 5

The problem (in the python example) is that the command substitution (the backquoted expression) isn't protected by quotes. To fix, put double-quotes around it (and to make the quotes nest better, use $() instead of backquotes):

eval "$(python -c 'print "echo \"keep    my     spacing\""')"

Answer 6

$ . <(python -c 'print "echo \"keep    my     spacing\""')
keep    my     spacing