CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bashshellcat
HobbitOfShire
HobbitOfShire

Reputation: 2414

Cat not writing special variables in file

I am using cat to write into file with script shell.

 cat <<EOF >/home/test.txt
 set $value1 $value2;
 EOF

My file containts just this string "set ;" but i need to find "set $value1 $value2;". I guess cat thinks "$value1" is a shell variable but it is just a string that i need to write into a file.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 2138

Answers (1)

dogbane
dogbane

Reputation: 274542

Use quotes around EOF:

cat <<"EOF" >/home/test.txt
set $value1 $value2;
EOF

From the Here Documents section in man bash:

The format of here-documents is:

   <<[-]word
           here-document
   delimiter

If any characters in word are quoted, the delimiter is the result of quote removal on word, and the lines in the here- document are not expanded. If word is unquoted, all lines of the here-document are subjected to parameter expansion, command substitution, and arithmetic expansion.

Upvotes: 9

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