output of unix command in chef recipe

Okay, so finally at a keyboard and can write this out in full.

The literal translation of what you have there would be:

execute 'run dynamically generated install file' do    command 'make install'    cwd lazy { shell_out!('ls -Adrt /tmp/unixODBC.* | tail -n 1').stdout.strip }end

However that is going to be much slower than needed and more failure prone so I would recommend writing it in Ruby instead:

execute 'run dynamically generated install file' do    command 'make install'    cwd lazy { Dir['/tmp/unixODBC.*'].first }end

This avoids having to spawn a bunch of processes and instead just does the same (I think) logic directly.

You should be able to do it just like this:

execute 'run dynamically generated install file' do    command 'make install'    cwd `ls -Adrt /tmp/unixODBC.* | tail -n 1`end

That seems like it's out of the scope of an execute block.

Maybe just use a ruby_block?

ruby_block 'run dynamically generated install file' do    require 'mixlib/shellout'    block do        cmd = Mixlib::ShellOut.new('make install')        cmd.run_command        cwd = cmd.stdout        # Do more stuff with cwd...    endend