Do I need to quote command substitutions?

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$(echo foo bar) is indeed a command substitution. In this specific example, you don’t need double quotes because a variable assignment creates a “double quote context” for its right-hand side, so VAR=$(…) is equivalent to VAR="$(…)".

In bash, you don’t need double quotes in export VAR=$(…) or declare VAR=$(…). But you do need the double quotes in some other sh implementations such as dash.

You do need double quotes in env VAR=$(…) somecommand, in make VAR=$(…), etc. It isn’t the equal sign that makes the double quotes optional, it’s the fact that the equal sign is parsed by the shell as an assignment.

There are a few other contexts where the double quotes are optional, but you can’t go wrong with the simple rule: always use double quotes around variable and command substitutions unless you want the split+glob operator.

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