redirecting stdout in shell script

Question

Either it is late in the day for me or I am missing something naive here.

here is a contrived example

#!/bin/bash
command="ls -al > check.txt"
$command

When I run this script on a shell it gives me error I guess due to the ">" operator. Anyway I can redirect the output from inside a shell script. I thought this was very straight forward:

ls -la > temp.txt
ls: cannot access >: No such file or directory
ls: cannot access temp.txt: No such file or directory

m0skit0 · Accepted Answer · 2012-05-02 00:52:04Z

4

#!/bin/bash
command="ls -al" 
$command > check.txt

> is a special character in Bash (and most shells). It does not belong to a command.

answered May 2, 2012 at 0:52

m0skit0

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dpp · Accepted Answer · 2012-05-02 01:55:45Z

2

Here is another way to do it using eval,

#!/bin/bash
command="ls -al > check.txt"
eval $command

answered May 2, 2012 at 1:55

dpp

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