Running multiple commands stored as a semi-colon separated string

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi,

Is there a way in Korn Shell that I can run multiple commands stored as a semi-colon separated string, e.g.,

# vs="echo a; echo b;"
# $vs
a; echo b;

I want to be able to store commands in a variable, then run all of it once and pipe the whole output to another program without using any temporary file or storing the individual commands outputs in another shell variable.

I seem to be able to do this directly on command line prompt but why not using a variable:

> ( echo a; echo b ) | wc -l
2
> vs="( echo a; echo b )"
> $vs | wc -l
bash: (: command not found
0
> `$vs` | wc -l
bash: (: command not found
0
>

Thanks for any help.

2 
eval $vs |wc -l

2
1 Like
3

Thanks, that worked.