Command substitution is basically another way to do a pipe, you can use pipes and command substitution interchangeably, it's up to you which one you find easier...
Command substitution can be done in two distinct ways.
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- Method One (back-quotes)
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Simply type:
command_1 `command_2 -options`
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This will execute "command_2" and it's output will become the input to "command_1".
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Backquote key |
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The back-quote key is usually located at the same place as the tilde, above the [Tab] key.
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- Method Two (dollars sign)
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Simply type:
This will execute "command_2" and it's output will become the input to "command_1".
- Using the pipe instead
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You can of course use pipes to do the same thing, if you don't know what a pipe is, please see Section 6.2. For example instead of doing:
less $cat file1.txt file2.txt
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You could do:
cat file1.txt file2.txt | less
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And end up with exactly the same result, it's up to you which way you find easier.
