[net.bugs.v7] Bourne Shell bug?

johnl (05/12/82)

Qumix!msc noted that if you say:

  $ command `cat foo`

and there are quotes in foo, it treats them as normal characters rather
than treating them they way they are on the command line.  It uses only
the IFS characters (blank, tab, \n) to determine arguments.

The "eval" command makes the shell rescan its arguments as though they
had been typed at command level, so:

  $ eval command `cat foo`

gets the effect he wanted.

					John Levine
					decvax!cca!ima!johnl
					chico!esquire!ima!johnl