Problem with cat

UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users
1

On Solaris 5.8 in ksh,

I have a sample.txt with contents
A 105 305
B 205 405
C 100 198
.......................

when I do a cat sample.txt the O/P is exactly as above but when I do a echo `cat sample.txt` the O/P changes to

A 105 305 B 205 405 C 100 198...........

Everything is displayed as one single line.

Why is this happenning and what should I do to get the O/P from echo `cat sample.txt` to display as cat sample.txt

Thanks,

2

When the shell builds the command line for the echo command it removes white space characters. If you type an echo statement with a bunch of spaces between the arguments like this:
echo a &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp b
you will only get:
a b
as your output, and you are running into the same thing. I guess you could use quotes like this:
echo "`cat sample.txt`"

But what is wrong with just:
cat sample.txt

If you insist on using "echo" like that, remember that the file's contents must all fit one one command line, so it won't work with longer files.

3

The echo "`cat sample.txt`" worked. Thanks.

The reason I am doing the echo is cause I have to pass the entire file to Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) as a script O/P and OEM wont accept more than one "oramessage" statement.

Here is exatcly how I am using it ....

export EX_FL=`cat sample.txt`
echo "<orameaage>" $EX_FL "</oramessage>".
echo "<oraresult>2</oraresult>"

In my script there can only be one "<oramessage></oamessage>" statement.

Thanks,

4