Missing matching quote with su -c in bash script

Question

I want to write something like

EXEC="sudo su -m root -c \"java Something\""
$EXEC &

But i get the following error:

Something": -c: line 0: unexpected EOF while looking for matching `"'
Something": -c: line 1: syntax error: unexpected end of file

If I write the command on the command line it executes. If I have it stored in a variable and trying to extrapolate it - it does not. Why?

Answer 1

Try this:

exec="ls -l \"/a b c\""
$exec

You will see something like:

ls: cannot access "/a: No such file or directory
ls: cannot access b: No such file or directory
ls: cannot access c": No such file or directory

Which shows exactly where the problem is - that is - expansion of variable is done after word splitting.

To make it work, you can use eval:

=$ eval "$exec"
ls: cannot access /a b c: No such file or directory

or even:

=$ sh -c "$exec"

Or better yet, don't make such commands to run. Not sure what is the purpose of it, but think about avoiding building full command lines in variables.