Bash - How to execute a script which is output from a different script

Question

I have a CLI which generates a bash script. How can I evaluate it immediatly without redirecting to a .sh file?

example is to change the following:

~: toolWhichGeneratesScript > tmp.sh
~: chmod +x tmp.sh
~: ./tmp.sh

to something like:

~: toolWhichGeneratesScript | evaluate

Answer 1

You can pass in commands to run with bash -c (or sh -c ):

bash -c "$(toolWhichGeneratesScript)"

  -c If the -c option is present, then commands are read from the first non-option argument command_string. If there are arguments after the command_string, they are assigned to the positional parameters, starting with $0. 

Unlike piping to the shell, this leaves stdin free for you to interact with prompts and programs the script runs.

Answer 2

The shell reads its script from standard input:

toolWhichGeneratesScript | sh

(In fact, an interactive shell does the same; it's standard input just happens to be a terminal.)

Note that you need to know which shell to use; if your tool outputs bash extensions, then you have to pipe it to bash . Also, if the generated script itself needs to read from standard input, you have a bit of a problem.

Answer 3

Try to do this : toolWhichGeneratesScript | bash