Because storing the result in a shell variable always strings out redundant white space.

If you want newlines, then pipe it direct.

tripViolations=$($tripwire --check --quiet | awk '/Total violations found/ {print $4}')

Thanks that works.

But I want to use the results in two different places- first check for violations, then email the full report to me, in the same script.

I could issue tripwire --check twice(bad), I could write the results to a file then read it twice(ok...), but is there some option that will keep redundant white space in the shell variable?

No.
You'll have to use a temp file.

Or write the whole thing in perl, then you can do whatever you want.

Doesn't tripwire write a to a report file by default? Maybe you could get the results you're looking for by running tripwire and then parsing the report?

Otherwise, I think you're just missing some quotes to hold everything together Try this!


(I took some liberties with your grep|awk arrangement... why use 2 cmds when one will do!

Another way to do this would be with a temporary file, like Salem said. You could do something like this:


Or you might want to choose to keep those log files, and timestamp them.



I hope this helps! Sorry if that's too much info... or not enough...

-G

See you shouldn't have done that cause now I used your solution instead of learning perl cause I'm lazy.

But seriously thanks it works great. For the log file I had to change %D to %F.

Edit: it was the second solution that worked.