[PLUG] Variable interpolation in bash

[Will Dyson <will_dyson@pobox.com>]

This has been bugging me for a while now. When I am writting a bash 
script, I often want to do something of the form:

	COMMAND_OPTIONS="-foo -bar --long-opt-whos-arg 'has spaces'"
	command $COMMAND_OPTIONS baz

What I want to happen is for the shell to eventually execute:

	command -foo -bar --long-opt-whos-arg 'has spaces' baz

But it doesn't. Instead, I get an error from command along the lines of 
"argument 'spaces' unrecognized", indicating that the shell has not passed 
'has spaces' as a single argument to command.

Running the script with bash -x shows me this:

	+ COMMAND_OPTIONS=-foo -bar --long-opt-whos-arg 'has spaces'
	+ command -foo -bar --long-opt-whos-arg ''\''has' 'spaces'\''' baz

Any suggestions?

--
Will Dyson
"Back off man, I'm a scientist!" -Dr. Peter Venkman

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