How to specify a multi-line shell variable?

Use read with a heredoc as shown below:

read -d '' sql << EOF
select c1, c2 from foo
where c1='something'
EOF

echo "$sql"

I would like to give one additional answer, while the other ones will suffice in most cases.

I wanted to write a string over multiple lines, but its contents needed to be single-line.

sql="                       \
SELECT c1, c2               \
from Table1, ${TABLE2}      \
where ...                   \
"

I am sorry if this if a bit off-topic (I did not need this for SQL). However, this post comes up among the first results when searching for multi-line shell variables and an additional answer seemed appropriate.

simply insert new line where necessary

sql="
SELECT c1, c2
from Table1, Table2
where ...
"

shell will be looking for the closing quotation mark