Shell variable expansion shortcut

[nigel at cmsfl]

Thanks to all you good folks who dumped on me regarding popen(),
I deserved it, although if I read another RTFM message I think I'll
core dump for sure .... ;-)

One of the reasons I got of track and missed pclose() was that I
was trying a bit of a short cut for variable expansion where
waiting for the pclose() wasn't immediately obvious.

Basically, to save the hassle of scanning a given small data
file for variables (which it could legally contain for this
application) I thought I would get /bin/sh to do it for me.

Basically each line was encapsulated with 

echo "datafromfile" >> tmpfile

(I escaped any double quotes in the input.)

This was all then piped through /bin/sh.

This works fine and I don't need to do variable expansion in the
program making it smaller, plus I get the other benefits of the 
other shell facilities `` etc which I would never have included.

Only thing is it seems pretty fudgey to my conscience so I throw it
open for a better more elegant way to do the same thing.

The only thing is that I don't want to add 1000 lines of expansion
code to the program to do it.

Well, if you are interested in the challenge then I guess I'll
here from you ...

Regards
-- 
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<  Nigel Harwood  >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
<< Post:  Coles Myer Ltd, PO Box 2000 Tooronga 3146, Australia     >>
<< Phone: +61 3 829 6090  E-mail: nigel at cnw01.storesys.coles.oz.au >>
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
-- 
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<  Nigel Harwood  >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
<< Post:  Coles Myer Ltd, PO Box 2000 Tooronga 3146, Australia     >>
<< Phone: +61 3 829 6090  E-mail: nigel at cnw01.storesys.coles.oz.au >>
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>