No command substitution but subshell redirection
It's quite easy to capture the output of a command and assign it in a shell's variable:
day=$(date +%d)
month=$(date +%m)
But, what if we want to perform the same task with just one program invocation? Here comes the power of eval! date(1) outputs a string like "day=29; month=07; year=11" (notice the semicolons I added on purpose at date's custom output) which is a legal shell line. This like is then parsed and executed by the shell once again with the help of eval. Just setting 3 variables!
Inspired by LinuxJournal's column "Dave Taylor's Work the Shell".
Show Sample Output
Any thoughts on this command? Does it work on your machine? Can you do the same thing with only 14 characters?
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