Quoting Variables

[cheesecake42]

I've been playing around with couchDB and working on a script to create a specific type of document but the variables are giving me problems. Here's the current line I have in my script:

curl -X PUT http://sandbox:5984/test/$UUID -d '{"One":"$first","Two":$second"}'

Obviously, it's outputting $first and $second instead of using the previously defined values. I can't figure out how to escape it propperly to give me the output that I want. assuming the variable values are first=bananas and second=apples, the actual command run by the script should be:

curl -X PUT http://sandbox:5984/test/$UUID -d '{"One":"bananas","Two":apples"}'

Also, these variables are initially being defined by the user through "read".

[Cancerous]

You're missing a " at the start of $second.

[atreyu]

curl -X PUT http://sandbox:5984/test/$UUID -d '{"One":"bananas","Two":apples"}'

for some reason, passing the data like that (enclosed in curlies) didn't work for me. but this does:

curl -X PUT http://$URL -d One="$first" -d Two="$second"

[cheesecake42]

I don't think I can use that formatting. Couch is not accepting it as valid JSON

[atreyu]

I don't think I can use that formatting. Couch is not accepting it as valid JSON

i see. i'm not using couch, just a regular CGI parser. so how about this then? Replace the outer single quotes w/the double-quotes:

curl -X PUT http://$URL -d "{One=$first,Two=$second}"

this allows the variables ($first, $second) to get expanded. single-quotes will prevent that.

or, if for some reason, you need the quotes around the parameter values, you can escape them, e.g.:

curl -X PUT http://$URL -d "{One=\"$first\",Two=\"$second\"}"

[cheesecake42]

I definitely need the double quotes to appear around the variable. The problem with the second example you posted is that when I escape quotation marks, it reads escape slash as part of the string as well (it's not only escaping the quotation marks but passing the slash along to couch in addition to the quotation marks).

[atreyu]

The problem with the second example you posted is that when I escape quotation marks, it reads escape slash as part of the string as well (it's not only escaping the quotation marks but passing the slash along to couch in addition to the quotation marks).

I don't understand how that is possible. Is your script written in Bash or something else? Can you show a snippet of code that uses the curl command?

Assuming Bash, here is another angle:

args="{One:\"$first\",Two:\"$second\"}"
curl -X PUT http://localhost/cgi-bin/env.pl -d "$args"