[ILUG] developerWorks article...

[Kenn Humborg]

On Mon, May 15, 2000 at 10:18:53AM +0100, Noel Carroll wrote:
> What the hell is
> a 'here' file and is there more to it than just an _EOF_ flag as was
> detailed in the article.

Imagine you want to send a multi-line mail message from a script:

   #!/bin/sh
   (  echo This is a long message 
      echo and this is line 2 
      echo and this is line 3
      echo don\'t forget to quote quotes
      echo $USER will be substituted with username
   ) | mail -s "stupid message" kenn

You can also do this using here documents:

   #!/bin/sh
   mail -s "stupid message" kenn <<END_OF_MESSAGE
   This is a long message
   and this is line 2
   and this is line 3
   don't need to quote quotes
   $USER will not be substituted
   END_OF_MESSAGE

This lets you 'inline' a bunch of data.  You end the data with a line
containing only the token that follows the << operator.

If you want to make the content of the here document easier to
see, you can indent them with tabs and use <<- instead of <<.
Bash will remove the leading tabs.

Later,
Kenn