How to get bash to insert ' in the output

Question

Hi everybody,

I'm rather new to bash, and somehow just haven't found out what I'm doing wrong here: (this is a small bash script calling my generator)

    if [ -n $folder ]; then
        $zorbalocation -q $generator -f -e files=\"$lFiles\" -e folder=\"lFolder\"
    else
        $zorbalocation -q $generator -f -e files=\"$lFiles\" -e folder=\".\"
    fi

Now, obviously I want bash to execute these commands, depending on the content of folder. But, for some reason, bash insists on putting apostrophes ( ' ) around files=... and folder =... So, it tries to execute

../../../zorba/build/bin/zorba -q generator.xq -f -e 'files="test.xqlib"' -e 'folder="."'

instead of

../../../zorba/build/bin/zorba -q generator.xq -f -e files="test.xqlib" -e folder="."

Does anybody know why bash insists on inserting the apostrophes there?

A nice day to everyone

Danny

Answer 1

As long as they need no further interpretation (e.g. variable expansion), putting single quotes around arguments or command name should not be a problem for bash.

Answer 2

put echo in your statement and see if they are what you expect. Also, try not to escape those double quotes.

if [ -n $folder ]; then
    echo $zorbalocation -q $generator -f -e files="$lFiles" -e folder="lFolder"
else
    echo $zorbalocation -q $generator -f -e files="$lFiles" -e folder="."
fi

otherwise, show the rest of your code before executing this portion

Answer 3

Bash doesn't add ' to the command that is executed. You only see the quote when running your script with bash -x or set -x; then bash tries to print out the commands it runs, and to be helpful, it quotes tokens that would need quoting if you wanted to paste them back into bash, therefore a="b" becomes 'a="b"'. Your issue must be something else.

Answer 4

Everything cleared now, it seems that by using the eval command everything works fine. Thanks to all here for your help.