Connect multiple commands via pipe in a shell variable

Question

What I want to do is:

>STRIPPER='sed s/admin_editable=\"[01]\"// | sed s/runtime_editable=\"[01]\"//'
>cat file.txt | $STRIPPER > stripped.txt

i.e. define a shell variable which is a pipeline of multiple commands (mine happen to be sed's), that I can then call later. I'm doing this from the command line now, but may ultimately put it into a script.

I've tried both ' and " for enclosing the command neither works.

sed: can't read |: No such file or directory
sed: can't read sed: No such file or directory
sed: can't read s/admin_editable=\"[01]\"//: No such file or directory
sed: can't read |sed: No such file or directory
sed: can't read s/runtime_editable=\"[01]\"//: No such file or directory
sed: can't read |: No such file or directory

I know that there is probably a single regex that could handle this case, but I'd like to know how to do the pipeline in general.

Pipelines are part of the shell's grammar, and as such are recognized before any parameter expansion takes place. — chepner
– chepner, Commented Feb 5, 2013 at 18:16

Dave · Accepted Answer · 2020-10-21 18:40:36Z

3

This is a great place to use a function rather than a variable.

stripper() {
    sed s/admin_editable="[01]"// | sed s/runtime_editable="[01]"//
}

cat file.txt | stripper > stripped.txt

You could also eliminate the useless use of cat:

stripper < file.txt > stripped.txt

edited Oct 21, 2020 at 18:40

Dave

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answered Feb 5, 2013 at 17:49

John Kugelman

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