Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@xxxxxx> writes: >> I.e.: >> >> FOO='with spaces' >> BAR=$FOO sh -c 'echo $BAR' >> >> works just fine. > > $ x="two spaces" > > $ echo $x > two spaces > > Maybe we should quote a little bit more religiously. Both of you are wrong ;-) Of course, the lack of dq around echo's argument makes shell split two and spaces into two args and feed them separately to echo, and causes echo to show them with a single SP in between. Peff's exampel should have been BAR=$FOO sh -c 'echo "$BAR"' But that does not have much to do with the primary point Peff was talking about, which is that in this sequence: $ x="two spaces" $ y="$x" $ z=$x $ echo "x=<$x>" "y=<$y>" "z=<$z>" assignment to y and z behave identically, i.e. dq around "$x" when assigning to y is not needed.
