bash redirecting EOF into variable [duplicate]

Answer 1

cat is useless here. Provide EOF inside the subshell:

#! /bin/bash
export PERL5LIB=$(tr '\n' ':'<<EOF
/home/vul/repository/projects/implatform/daemon/trunk/lib/
/home/vul/repository/projects/platformlib/tool/trunk/cpan_lib
/home/projects/libtrololo
EOF
)

Answer 2

Isn't it waiting for the EOF in your heredoc ?

I'd expect you to say

$ mycommand <<EOF
input1
input2
...
EOF

Note that EOF isn't a magic keyword. It's just a marker, and could be anything (ABC etc.). It indicates the end-of-file, but people simply write EOF as convention.

Answer 3

What you call "EOF" can be googled as Here Document. Here Document can only be used to feed the standard input of a command. The below example does what you want without spawning child processes

#!/bin/bash

multilineconcat=
while read line; do
  #echo $line
  multilineconcat+=$line
  multilineconcat+=":"
done << EOF
path1
path2
EOF

echo $multilineconcat