[kwlug-disc] wget and variable assignment

[Tim Utschig]

On Thu, Jun 03, 2010 at 12:58:15PM -0400, Richard Weait wrote:
> 
> GETTEE=`wget -q -O - http://www.openstreetmap.org/stats/data_stats.html`
> echo "GETTEE = $GETTEE"
> 
> This returns a mess.
> 
> The quick and dirty is to wget four times for four numbers, but I
> don't want to do that.  How do I assign the wget to a variable and
> keep \n ?


The newlines are kept, you just need to be sure to quote it:

  $ OUTPUT=`wget -q -O - http://google.com/`
  $ echo $OUTPUT | wc -l
  1
  $ echo "$OUTPUT" | wc -l
  10

The first is unquoted, and as a result gets split at whitespace
into separate arguments.  The second gets passed a single
argument, since it's quoted.  Below shows the argument count:

    $ sh -c 'echo $#' - $OUTPUT
    244
    $ sh -c 'echo $#' - "$OUTPUT"
    1

-- 
   - Tim Utschig <tim at tetro.net>