variable value not storing inside file

I wrote following script, which generate random password and store it in file

pass1=</dev/urandom tr -dc _A-Z-a-z-0-9|head -c8
echo $pass1
echo "$pass1" >/tmp/a

Above script printing generated password through “echo $pass1″ command. But nothing getting stored inside created /tmp/a file .

Please let me know whats wrong i am doing.

It’s not necessary to store the password in an intermediate variable. You only need this line in your shell script

</dev/urandom tr -dc _A-Z-a-z-0-9|head -c8 > /tmp/a

I saved as foo.sh, made permissions 755, and executed it under linux…

[mpenning@chestnut ~]$ uname -a
Linux chestnut.he.net 2.6.32.46-1-grsec #1 SMP Fri Sep 2 12:42:23 PDT 2011 x86_64 GNU/Linux
[mpenning@chestnut ~]$ ./foo.sh
[mpenning@chestnut ~]$ cat /tmp/a
qAUezN0-[mpenning@chestnut ~]$

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