Bash treating variable expansion as command while passing to other script

Question

a=HDH b=udud c=jsjsj bash secondscript

The command above works. I'd like to save the assignments in a variable, like so:

value="\
    a=HDH \
    b=udud \
    c=ududj \
    "
$value bash secondscript

But it gives an error:

test.sh: line 9: a=HDH: command not found

Why? What can I do instead?

Ok so what should i do then ? Any workaround to achieve my goal — Golu, May 27 '20 at 12:02
For an explanation of why you can't save assignments in a variable see my writeup here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/61898254/how-can-i-create-a-bash-environment-variable-that-prefixes-an-environment-variab/61898307#61898307. — John Kugelman, May 27 '20 at 12:42
i have tested with your example string/variable it works (at least on mksh). maybe you forgot quotes for spaces? https://i.stack.imgur.com/mVnn5.png — alecxs, May 27 '20 at 15:21

Philippe · Accepted Answer · 2020-05-27T12:56:15.070

3

bash's taking first item a=HDH as a command, what you need is :

value=(
  "a=HDH"
  "b=udud"
  "c=ududj"
)
env "${value[@]}" bash secondscript

edited May 27 '20 at 12:56

answered May 27 '20 at 12:34

Philippe

1 Answers1