Solved Command Line Special Character Handling

[Phishfry]

I was trying to help a user here and I found I could not use the command I intended.
echo exec $1 > .xinitrc
In the file it dropped of the $1 so I tried double quotes to no avail
echo "exec $1" > .xinitrc
What can I use here for proper redirect? I am guessing $1 is an asci thing?

 

[Phishfry]

So this tells me why it don't work. Special shell characters. Positional parameters.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/29258603/what-do-0-1-2-mean-in-shell-script

How to get around it?

 

[Phishfry]

Rookie trys with a strikeout:

root@Dell:~ # echo "[exec $1]" >> .xinitrc
root@Dell:~ # echo ( "exec $1" ) >> .xinitrc
Badly placed ()'s.
root@Dell:~ # echo {"exec $1"} >> .xinitrc

Shoot dang- RTFM
https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/shells.html

root@Dell:~ # echo exec \$1 > .xinitrc
root@Dell:~ # cat .xinitrc
exec $1

 

[wblock@]

What are you trying to do? Both exec and the $1 are probably not going to do what was intended.

Let's instead call the variable $x so the shell does not replace it, and not use exec, which does not just execute the command given but replaces the running shell with it.

echo `$x` >> .xinitrc

In general, that seems like a weird way to write that file, since few commands are going to create the correct contents to go in there.

 

[SirDice]

Rookie trys with a strikeout:
root@Dell:~ # echo "[exec $1]" >> .xinitrc
root@Dell:~ # echo ( "exec $1" ) >> .xinitrc
Badly placed ()'s.
root@Dell:~ # echo {"exec $1"} >> .xinitrc

Shoot dang- RTFM
https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/shells.html

root@Dell:~ # echo exec \$1 > .xinitrc
root@Dell:~ # cat .xinitrc
exec $1

This will work too:

echo 'exec $1' > .xinitrc

The single quotes won't interpret any $ variables but takes the $ literally.

FOO='something'
echo "$FOO"
echo '$FOO'