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Looked some for an answer, but not finding anything that sticks out as a solution.

I'm trying to make a bash script, and in it I need to save the output of git rev-parse --show-toplevel to a variable. When I run this command in my terminal it spits something to output.

Firstly, why does myVar=git rev-parse --show-toplevel not work in my script? The error I'm getting is rev-parse: command not found.

Secondly, I think I need to do something like myVar=${git rev-parse --show-toplevel}, but this is telling me it's a bad substitution.

Can anyone clarify these things for me, or link to stuff that is relevant? Would really appreciate it.

noob-in-need
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1 Answers1

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You need command substitution ($()) to save the output of a command in a variable:

myVar="$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)"

Now to get the value of the variable myVar, use "$myVar".

heemayl
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  • Thanks for this. Exactly what I needed. Can you tell me about the double-quotes that you're using? I just changed my script, and am not using any quotes anywhere but am getting the correct behavior.

    When should I use quotes as you have?

     – noob-in-need Apr 13 '16 at 15:55
  • you can also use backticks myVar= `git rev-parse --show-toplevel` – magor Apr 13 '16 at 16:00
  • Also, can you tell me if git rev-parse --show-toplevel would return a 0 or 1 (as an exit code) in addition to the text that it outputs? How would I capture the exit code instead of the output text if that were what I was after? – noob-in-need Apr 13 '16 at 16:01
  • @noob-in-need check http://unix.stackexchange.com/a/68748/68757 .. the exit status will remain the same to what would be without the variable.. – heemayl Apr 13 '16 at 16:16