Quote Bash Problem

Question

Here is my code.

I can give why I do this code. I try to take 1 file, take a line and guess if this line 1 have any "", if yes, I change to the second file and try to see if the line 1 have "" if no, I keep the data of file2/line1 and get in the final file.

But my question is: How doing an escape quote ?

#! /bin/bash
compteur="1"
ligne="2"
rm testfinal 2>/dev/null
touch testfinal 2>/dev/null
#########BOUCLE PERMUTATION LIGNE

while (( $ligne < "32" ))
do
        if [ 'cat test$compteur | sed -n $ligne\p | awk -F" "'{print $2}' ' == "*" ]
        then compteur=$((compteur+1));
        else
                   cat test$compteur | sed -n $ligne\p >> testfinal
                   ligne=$((ligne+1));
                   compteur=$((compteur=1));
fi
done

Edit: I find myself, the answers his: if [ "sed -n $ligne\p test$compteur | awk -F" " '{print $2}'" == "*" ]

Answer 1

Your example command doesn't make any sense. You have no then or fi to go with your if, and you are incorrectly stuffing commands into a test (i. e. [) block.

Your code:

if [ 'cat test$compteur | sed -n $ligne\p | awk -F" " '{print $2}' ' == "*" ]

It looks like you're trying to compare the output of that chain of commands, and if the output is literally *, then do some undetermined thing? If so:

if [[ "$( cat test$computer | sed -n $ligne\p | awk -F' ' '{print $2}')" == "*" ]]; then
    do_something
fi

But this can be optimized a little bit; not least by getting rid of your "useless use of cat:

if [[ "$( sed -n $ligne\p test$computer | awk -F' ' '{print $2}')" == "*" ]]; then
    do_something
fi

I'm not sure about what you're doing with your sed command, but presuming that linge is a variable containing a line number to print, this could even be done just in awk:

if [[ "$( awk -F' ' -v ln=$linge 'NR==ln { print $2 }' )" == "*" test$computer ]]; then
    do_something
fi

Taking the full script you have submitted in your "answer", I have rewritten it with this changes and a couple of other small tweaks:

#!/bin/bash
compteur="1"
ligne="2"
> testfinal # clears contents of file in one step rather than rm; touch
#########BOUCLE PERMUTATION LIGNE

while [[ "$ligne" -lt 32 ]]; do
    if [[ "$( awk -F' ' -v ln=$ligne 'NR==ln { print $2 }' test$computer )" == "*" ]]; then
        compteur=$((compteur+1));
    else
        awk -v ln=$ligne 'NR==ln' >> testfinal
        ligne=$((ligne+1))
        compteur=$((compteur+1)); # I presume that the original 'compteur=1' was a typo.
    fi
done

Answer 2

Is it possible that you mix up single quotes ' and back ticks " `` " ? With back ticks (the old, deprecated "command substitution", equivalent to the new $(...)), your code line would make some sense, nonwithstanding GopeGhoti's improvement proposals.