Re: Inconsistent handling of quotes in backticks

[Paul Jarc]

bronson@rinspin.com wrote:
> However, if you put quotes around the command in a backtick substitution,
> the command fails:
>
>       $ `echo "\"echo\" hi"`
>       bash: "echo": command not found

This is normal behavior.  man bash:
   Quote Removal
       After the preceding expansions, all unquoted occurrences of the charac-
       ters  \,  ', and " that did not result from one of the above expansions
       are removed.

Since these " characters were the result of command substitution, they
are not removed.  Maybe this is what you want:
$ eval `echo "\"echo\" hi"`

But beware that this will also process any further expansions,
redirections, etc., that may appear in the result of the command
substitution.  It will be evaluated just like a top-level command.


paul