Scripting: howto preserve whitespace

[Ralph Grothe]

Hi,

I seem to be blockheaded.
I cannot recall how to preserve whitespace with variable assignments in command substitutions when shell scripting.
In Perl this is no issue at all.
Please have a look at the attachment to see what I mean.

Regards
Ralph

[Stefan Farrelly]

use the IFS variable. Before you do cm=$(...
do; IFS=''
Then it echoes fine.

[Leif Halvarsson_2]

Hi
cm="/abd/def/gh iii jjj"
echo $cm

[Steven Sim Kok Leong]

Hi Ralph,

I would do this instead:

# /usr/sbin/cmviewcl -v -p depot > /tmp/cm.txt
# cm=/tmp/cm.txt
# cat $cm

Hope this helps. Regards.

Steven Sim Kok Leong

[Stefan Farrelly · Accepted solution]

Ralph,

my earlier reply doesnt format well, its 2 single quotes (not a single double quote);
IFS='' (2 single quotes)

[Frank Slootweg]

You just have to quote the variable when you use/display it, i.e. not

echo $cm

but

echo "$cm"

(I have not tried it with cmviewcl, but just with a cat(1) of a file containing your posted cmviewcl output. To be on the safe side, I did and "unexpand -a" on the file, so it did not only contain spaces, but also tabs.)

[Ralph Grothe]

Stefan,

yeah, that was it
of course, I forgot $IFS

In Perl its equivilant is the package global $/

Loks I've forgotten all about shell scripting :-(

[Ralph Grothe]

Frank,

your solution is preferable, because it's safer than tampering with IFS

Argh, how could I forgot the shells quoting mechanics?

Steven,

I want to avoid the creation of temporary files.