Execute a command and put the results into a variable... all in a bash script

Question

I'm working on a bash script that backs up a configuration file before copying over a new file.

Here's what my snippet looks like:

mv ~/myStuff.conf  ~/myStuff.conf.bak
cp ~/new/myStuff.conf ~/myStuff.conf

Every time this script is run, I'd like there the backup to have a unix timestamp in the filename. I tried this

DATEVAR=date +%s
mv ~/myStuff.conf  ~/myStuff.conf.$DATEVAR.bak

But this doesn't work, since the date function doesn't execute and bash sees it as a string, and the resulting file ends up being

myStuff.conf.date+%s.bak

Any ideas on how to get the results of the date function into a variable?

Technically, that other one is a duplicate of this as this is 3 years older. — music2myear, Feb 24 '17 at 23:57

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 10 '11 at 20:48

5

This is possible with command substitution.

DATEVAR=$(date +%s)

answered Feb 10 '11 at 20:48

Rich Homolka

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Jan 25 '16 at 16:35

1

--[[z4us|binz--]]

export datevar=`date` # date embedded in backquotes

--[[z4us|binz--]]

echo $datevar

Lun 25 Gen 2016 15:56:14 CET

edited Jan 25 '16 at 16:35

Nattgew

answered Jan 25 '16 at 14:57

Klaas-Z4us-V

Besides correctly formatting for code, an explanation of what is going on would improve this answer. – Nattgew Jan 25 '16 at 15:51
Well, Nattgew FYI: `export` makes the variable available in the environment to be used in next steps. Backquotes surround a bash-command that will be executed. I thought superusers are supposed to know these basics, but of course we have to think of readers who arrive here via any search engine :-) – Klaas-Z4us-V Jan 26 '16 at 09:40
For `bash` you may read any shell and I used the command without parameters to see what is the default. – Klaas-Z4us-V Jan 26 '16 at 09:49

Daniel Liston · Answer 3 · 2016-09-08T01:58:15.577

This does not answer the variable holding the output of a command. That is already answered. As for the rest of your example script;

A little shorter version:

mv ~/myStuff.conf  ~/myStuff.conf.$(date +%s)

No need to set a variable for something you only need or use once. Also, to be compatible with more shells, you could also use this syntax:

mv ~/myStuff.conf  ~/myStuff.conf.`date +%s`

It just seems to me that having the datestamp as an extension eliminates the need for the additional .bak in the filename.

3 Answers3