sed not working from sh file, but working from the command line

Question

sed works from the command line, but does not work if put it in an sh file and execute it. I want to change a number in an existing file and direct it to a new file, so I tried this:

echo enter number 
read num
var1='more ods2.sql | egrep -e "test" | cut -c 5-7' 
sed "s/test$var1/test$num/g" ods2.sql > odstest.sql

If I execute these statements in a prompt they execute with the desired results. I replaced $var1 with the string I passed, e.g 12345:

sed "s/test$var1/test$num/g" ods2.sql > odstest.sql

This also works fine from a prompt:

more ods2.sql | egrep -e "test" | cut -c 5-7'

Why isn't it working if I put this in a shell script?

Answer 1

This line

var1='more ods2.sql | egrep -e "test" | cut -c 5-7'

should be

var1=`more ods2.sql | egrep -e "test" | cut -c 5-7`

i.e. you need to use backticks instead of single quotes (apostrophes).