How to use "eval" (was: create variables in a loop?)

 gazelle@shell.xmission.com (Kenny McCormack):

Dr Eberhard W Lisse  <nospam@lisse.NA> wrote:

I would like to do something like >
>
for i in USD GBP
do
$i=somevalue
done
>
does not work, of course. >

>
The general answer is to use "eval", so something like: >
>
for i in USD GBP
do
eval $i=somevalue
done
>
But this doesn't scale well if "somevalue" is other than a simple string. >

 First assign "somevalue" to a variable, not using "eval".  Then  assign that variable's value to the variable named by "$i", using  "eval"    somevariablename=... &&
   # Note, that in the following assignment "..." may be any
   # valid shell expression expanding to a string, not just
   # a simple string:
   #
   somevalue=... &&
   # Note, how the apostrophes are placed around the right
   # hand part of the following assignment to be "eval"ed
   # but not around the name of the receiving variable to be
   # assigned to:
   #
   eval "$somevariablename"'="$somevalue"'