ksh storing result of a command to a variable

Question

I want to store the result of a command to a variable in my shell script. I cant seem to get it to work. I want the most recently dated file in the directory.

PRODUCT= 'ls -t /some/dir/file* | head -1 | xargs -n1 basename'

it wont work

Answer 1

you have two options, either $ or backsticks`.

1) x=$(ls -t /some/dir/file* | head -1 | xargs -n1 basename)

or

2) x=`ls -t /some/dir/file* | head -1 | xargs -n1 basename`

echo $x

Edit: removing unnecessary bracket for (2).