Saving a command into a variable instead of running it - linux

Question

I'm trying to get the output of the ps command to output to a file, then to use that file to populate a radiolist. So far I'm having problems.
eval "ps -o pid,command">/tmp/process$$
more /tmp/process$$
sed -e '1d' /tmp/process$$ > /tmp/process2$$
while IFS= read -r pid command
do
msgboxlist="$msgboxlist" $($pid) $($command) "off"
done</tmp/process2$$
height=`wc -l "/tmp/process$$" | awk '{print $1}'`
width=`wc --max-line-length "/tmp/process$$" | awk '{print $1}'`
echo $height $width
dialog \
--title "Directory Listing" \
--radiolist "Select process to terminate" "$msgboxlist" $(($height+7)) $(($width+4))
So far not only does the while read not split the columns into 2 variables ($pid is the whole line and $command is blank) but when I try to run this the script is trying to run the line as a command. For example:
+ read -r pid command
++ 7934 bash -x assessment.ba
assessment.ba: line 322: 7934: command not found
+ msgboxlist=
+ off
assessment.ba: line 322: off: command not found
Basically I have no idea where I'm supposed to be putting quotes, double quotes and backslashes. It's driving me wild.
tl;dr Saving a command into a variable without running it, how?

Answer 1

You're trying to execute $pid and $command as commands:
msgboxlist="$msgboxlist" $($pid) $($command) "off"
Try:
msgboxlist="$msgboxlist $pid $command off"
Or use an array:
msgboxlist=() # do this before the while loop
msgboxlist+=($pid $command "off")
# when you need to use the whole list:
echo "${msgboxlist[#]}"

Answer 2

Your script can be refactored by removing some unnecessary calls like this:
ps -o pid=,command= > /tmp/process$$
msgboxlist=""
while read -r pid command
do
msgboxlist="$msgboxlist $pid $command off"
done < /tmp/process2$$
height=$(awk 'END {print NR}' "/tmp/process$$")
width=$(awk '{if (l<length($0)) l=length($0)} END{print l}' "/tmp/process$$")
dialog --title "Directory Listing" \
--radiolist "Select process to terminate" "$msgboxlist" $(($height+7)) $(($width+4))

Answer 3

I have to admit, I'm not 100% clear on what you're doing; but I think you want to change this:
msgboxlist="$msgboxlist" $($pid) $($command) "off"
to this:
msgboxlist+=("$pid" "$command" off)
which will add the PID, the command, and "off" as three new elements to the array named msgboxlist. You'd then change "$msgboxlist" to "${msgboxlist[#]}" in the dialog command, to include all of those elements as arguments to the command.

Answer 4

Use double quotes when you want variables to be expanded. Use single quotes to disable variable expansion.
Here's an example of a command saved for later execution.
file="readme.txt"
cmd="ls $file" # $file is expanded to readme.txt
echo "$cmd" # ls readme.txt
$cmd # lists readme.txt
Edit adressing the read:
Using read generally reads an entire line. Consider this instead (tested):
ps o pid=,command= | while read line ; do
set $line
pid=$1
command=$2
echo $pid $command
done
Also note the different usage of 'ps o pid=,command=' to skip displaying headers.