title: Concatenate command string in a shell script
body: <p>I am maintaining an existing shell script which assigns a command to a variable in side a shell script like:</p>
  
  <pre><code>MY_COMMAND="/bin/command -dosomething"
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and then later on down the line it passes an "argument" to $MY_COMMAND by doing this :</p>
  
  <pre><code>MY_ARGUMENT="fubar"
  
  $MY_COMMAND $MY_ARGUMENT
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The idea being that <code>$MY_COMMAND</code> is supposed to execute with <code>$MY_ARGUMENT</code> appended. </p>
  
  <p>Now, I am not an expert in shell scripts, but from what I can tell, <code>$MY_COMMAND</code> does not execute with <code>$MY_ARGUMENT</code> as an argument. However, if I do:</p>
  
  <pre><code>MY_ARGUMENT="itworks"
  MY_COMMAND="/bin/command -dosomething $MY_ARGUMENT"
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>It works just fine.</p>
  
  <p>Is it valid syntax to call <code>$MY_COMMAND $MY_ARGUMENT</code> so it executes a shell command inside a shell script with <code>MY_ARGUMENT</code> as the argument?</p>