no, I am just storing my passwords in a text file and I don't want to do it plaintext, but I also don't want to have to encode the whole text file and have to decode it first to use it. Just make it more complicated if someone opens it.
Thanks for the reminder of ticks (`) I was accidentally using single quotes (')
Ah, then I stand by my original advice. Keep in mind, base64 encoded ascii/UTF-8/whatever encoding you like is still plaintext. If you want to be secure, use a password locker program or store them in a text file inside of a small encrypted volume which you unmount as soon as you're done with it (TrueCrypt is nice for this).
But if you don't care about them actually being secure, party on...
Aside from backticks, you can also use the dollar quote (I'm sure this has a better name):
$(some_command some arguments | some_other_command)
Finally, back to the original "how do I combine this with md5" question, you don't, as that won't do what you want. That is, you want to be able to recover the plaintext, but cryptographic hashes are designed specifically to make that practically impossible.
Thanks for the reminder of ticks (`) I was accidentally using single quotes (')