Using variables with fasterq-dump? I am trying to download multiple fastq files from the SRA NCBI database which, conveniently enough, have their IDs in a range. Building a simple loop doesn't seem to do the trick, as bash appears to interpret my variable as an additional command? Help would be appreciated. This is what I have for now:
for i in {256..345};do
    sra_code = &quot;DRR163&quot;&quot;$i"
fasterq-dump "$sra_code&quot; -p -v --outdir ./output/ -e 8 

done
```
You have an obvious error in your shell script that should have given you an error message:
sra_code = &quot;DRR163&quot;&quot;$i&quot;

Should be:
sra_code=&quot;DRR163&quot;&quot;$i&quot;

You cannot have spaces around the = sign in a variable assignment. The line sra_code = &quot;DRR163&quot;&quot;$i&quot; means &quot;run the command sra_code with the arguments = &quot;DRR163&quot;&quot;$i&quot;. Since there is no such command, you see an error.
Here's a working version of your command:
for i in {256..345}; do 
    sra_code=&quot;DRR163$i"
    fasterq-dump "$sra_code&quot; -p -v --outdir ./output/ -e 8
done