How to manipulate the & special character in shell

Question

I want to manipulate URLs in a shell script. I need to cut the URL with the & delimiter, and get the corresponding string.

I tried example="$(cut -d'&' -f2- <<< $1)" but when I'm executing this code and trying to echo $example, it wants to execute the $example content.

Can someone help me ?

Answer 1

No it does not.

When you do:

example="$(cut -d'&' -f2- <<< $1)"

it tries to execute the cut. As a test:

ljm@verlaine[~]$ a='1&ls&3&4'
ljm@verlaine[~]$ example="$(cut -d'&' -f2- <<< $a)"
ljm@verlaine[~]$ echo $example
ls&3&4
ljm@verlaine[~]$ 

And, although quoting like iBug suggested is a good idea and best practice, it is not absolutely required here.