从bash中的文件读取并执行带有空格的行

Question

I'm facing a problem in a bash shell script when I try to read some lines from a file and execute them one by one. The problem occurs when the line has an argument with spaces. Code:

while read i
do
   $i
done < /usr/bin/tasks

tasks file:

mkdir Hello\ World
mkdir "Test Directory"

Both of the above instructions work perfectly when executed directly from the terminal, creating only two directories called "Hello World" and "Test Directory" respectively, but the same doesn't happen when the instructions are read and executed from the script, meaning that four directories are created.

Having said that, I would like to keep my code as simple as possible and, if possible, I'd prefer not to use the cat command. Thanks in advance for any help.

Answer 1

As simple as possible? You are re-implementing the . (or source , as bash allows you to spell it) command:

. /usr/bin/tasks

or

source /usr/bin/tasks

---

To execute one line at a time, use eval .

while IFS= read -r i; do
    eval "$i"
done

This assumes that each line of the file contains one or more complete commands that can be executed individually.