Two or more white spaces in string

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi,

Can anybody suggest me how to combine two strings with two or more white spaces and assign it to a variable?
E.g.
first=HAI
second=HELLO
third="$first $second" # appending strings with more than one white spaces

echo $third

this would print
HAI HELLO

Output appears with only one white space.

TIA.
Regards,
Harish

2

I think the default IFS is defined to be a whitespace. So you can change the IFS to a newline and then output the desired variable

first=HAI
second=HELLO
oldifs="$IFS"
IFS='
'
third="$first $second"
echo $third
IFS="$oldifs"

Not tested tho'.

3

Vino,

It is working fine. Thanks.

Regards,
Harish