How to use shell variables after doing sudo su

Question

I am writing a script to fix a missing 'F' letter in a mail log file. The mail log file is continuously updating. I am getting a file name, after that I am doing 'sudo su' to get superuser access. Inside sudo, I am fixing a that missing 'F'. However, I am unable to use that file name inside sudo block. Please can anyone help me how I can export these shell variables inside sudo? I tried using export but its not working. The code block I have created is as follows-

 #Script to solve F issue
#----------------------------------------
#By Kapil Shirsath
#----------------------------------------

cd /var/spool/mail        #mail files reside in mail folder
echo "Entered in mail folder"

filename=`ls -lrt  99999*| sort -k 5 -rn | head -1 | tr -s " " "," | cut -d "," -f "8"`    # this will list the file with maximum size`

echo "File with maximum size is  $filename"
echo "----------------------------------------------------"
echo "Is it the file expected?(y/n)"
read choice
if test $choice == "n"
then
    echo "Exiting...."
    exit;
fi;

c=1
while [ $c -le 5 ]
do
    ls -lrt $filename
    echo $filename
    sleep 3
    c=`expr $c + 1`
done
echo "---------------------------------------------------"

sudo su<<'HERE'   #this will give you super user permissions
echo "Got root access"
echo "First line of the file is as below :"
head -1 $filename
echo "---------------------------------------"
firstline=`head -1 $filename`
echo "Repeat : $firstline"
echo $firstline | grep ^"rom" >/dev/null
if test $? -eq 0
then
ex -s $filename <<'EOF'
1s/^/F/
:wq
EOF
echo "F issue fixed!"
HERE


c=1
while [ $c -le 5 ]
do
    ls -lrt $filename
    sleep 3
    c=`expr $c + 1`
done
echo "---------------------------------------------------"  
else
    echo "Not finding the missing 'F' ! !! Kindly check with your system "
    exit;
fi;

Answer 1

You quoted the heredoc delimiter:

sudo su<<'HERE'

Variables in a heredoc are not expanded if the delimiter is quoted. From the docs:

If any characters in word are quoted, the delimiter is the result of quote removal on word, and the lines in the here-document are not expanded. If word is unquoted, all lines of the here-document are subjected to parameter expansion, command substitution, and arithmetic expansion, the character sequence \newline is ignored, and ‘\’ must be used to quote the characters ‘\’, ‘$’, and ‘`’.

Just use:

sudo su <<HERE

Example:

$ a=1; cat <<HERE
> $a
> HERE
1
$ a=1; cat <<'HERE'
> $a
> HERE    
$a