When I assign in a bash script
DATE=`date`
and
TODAY=${DATE:4:7}
then TODAY contains "Jul 2 " instead of "Jul{2 spaces} ".
So I want to change the first space in $TODAY into two spaces.
How do I do that?
Or how can I avoid the first wrong assignment to $TODAY?
If you just want Jul 2, why not using date options?
$ date "+%b %-d"
Jul 2
if you want current month followed by two spaces:
date +'%b '
or, for the long name:
date +'%B '
to assign the command to a variable just use $() operator like this:
DATE=$(date +'%b ')
and print it like this
echo "$DATE is the current month, with more spaces\!"
$(...) instead of backticks.You'll find that spaces are preserved:
$ DATE="$(date)"
$ echo "${DATE}"
$ Tue Jul 2 11:43:21 GMT 2013
$ TODAY=${DATE:4:7}
$ echo "*${TODAY}*"
$ *Jul 2 *
use the date params to format the date how you want
date "+%b %_d"
will pad the day with space giving the 2 spaces you are after
TODAYcontains"Jul<space><space>2<space>".$TODAYin quotes when you echo it, if you don't want spaces to be collapsed.