I'm trying to make a script that will append the port number to the host-name i extract from the computer but when i try to create slice from a string in bash it wont let me. i keep getting a bad substitution error in line 4. I have tried multiple things including using += but that just give me the same error
#! /bin/bash
addr=$(hostname -I)
len=${#addr}
echo "${addr:0:10}" # why does this not work? i tried it without quotes also, get same error
#echo "${addr:0:$len}" # am i a able to use variables in the slice
Related
I have a Bash script in which I call rsync in order to perform a backup to a remote server. To specify that my Downloads folder be backed up, I'm passing "'${HOME}/Downloads'" as an argument to rsync which produces the output:
rsync -avu '/Volumes/Norman Data/Downloads' me#example.com:backup/
Running the command with the variable expanded as above (through the terminal or in the script) works fine, but because of the space in the expanded variable and the fact that the quotes (single ticks) are ignored when included in the variable being passed as part of an argument (see here), the only way I can get it not to choke on the space is to do:
stmt="rsync -avu '${HOME}/Downloads' me#examle.com:backup/"
eval ${stmt}
It seems like there would be some vulnerabilities presented by running eval on anything not 100% private to that script. Am I correct in thinking I should be doing it a different way? If so, any hints for a bash-script-beginner would be greatly appreciated.
** EDIT ** - I actually have a bit more involved use case than. the example above. For the paths passed, I have an array of them, each containing spaces, that I'm then combining into 1 string kind of like
include_paths=(
"'${HOME}/dir_a'"
"'${HOME}/dir_b' --exclude=video"
)
for item in "${include_paths[#]}"
do
inc_args="${inc_args}" ${item}
done
inc_args evaluates to '/Volumes/Norman Data/me/dir_a' '/Volumes/Norman Data/me/dir_b' --exclude=video
which I then try to pass as an argument to rsync but the single ticks are read as literals and it breaks after the 1st /Volumes/Norman because of the space.
rsync -avu "${inc_args}" me#example.com:backup/
Using eval seems to read the single ticks as quotes and executes:
rsync -avu '/Volumes/Norman Data/me/dir_a' '/Volumes/Norman Data/me/dir_b' --exclude=video me#example.com:backup/
like I need it to. I can't seem to get any other way to work.
** EDIT 2 - SOLUTION **
So the 1st thing I needed to do was modify the include_paths array to:
remove single ticks from within double quoted items
move any path-specific flags (ex. --exclude) to their own items directly after the path it should apply to
I then built up an array containing the rsync command and its options, added the expanded include_paths and exclude_paths arrays and the connection string to the remote host.
And finally expanded that array, which ran my entire, properly quoted rsync command. In the end the modified array include_paths is:
include_paths=(
"${HOME}/dir_a"
"${HOME}/dir_b"
"--exclude=video"
"${HOME}/dir_c"
)
and I put everything together with:
cmd=(rsync -auvzP)
for item in "${exclude_paths[#]}"
do
cmd+=("--exclude=${item}")
done
for item in "${include_paths[#]}"
do
cmd+=("${item}")
done
cmd+=("me#example.com:backup/")
set -x
"${cmd[#]}"
Use an array for the commands/option instead of a plain variable.
stmt=(rsync -avu "${HOME}/Dowloads" me#example.com:backup/)
Execute it using the builtin command
command "${stmt[#]}"
...Or I personally just put the options/arguments in an array.
options=(-avu "${HOME}/Download" me#example.com:backup/)
The execute it using rsync
rsync "${options[#]}"
If you have newer version of bash which that supports the additional P.E. parameter expansion, then you could probably quote the array.
options=(-avu "${HOME}/Download" me#example.com:backup/)
Check the output by applying the P.E.
echo "${options[#]#Q}"
Should print
'-avu' '/Volumes/Norman Data/Downloads' 'me#examle.com:backup/'
Then you can just
rsync "${options[#]#Q}"
Following one example of the book << Learning the Bash Shell >> (O'Reilly),
pathname="/home/cam/book/long.file.name"
echo ${pathname##/*/}
echo ${pathname#/*/}
The expected result should be long.file.name, since ## remove the longest prefix which matches the patter /*/.
However, when I put these three lines inside a script file and run it inside bash, there is no result displayed. But type in these two lines one by one works and shows the expected result.
I wonder if there is any setting related to usage of this operator ## inside executable script.
(Using ubuntu\trusty64 within vagrant.)
Thanks.
UPDATE
The code works fine, the other part of the code affects the results.
In Addition
${path##*/} is a better choice as equivalent to basename command.
Though echo ${pathname##/*/} works fine for me but IMHO you should try following.
echo ${pathname##*/}
Which means you are saying bash with help of regex to remove/substitute everything from starting till last occurrence of / with NULL.
I'm using bash 4.4.19(1)-release.
At the start of my program I read customer configuration values from the command line, configuration file(s), and the environment (in decreasing order of precedence). I validate these configuration values against internal definitions, failing out if required values are missing or if the customer values don't match against accepted regular expressions. This approach is a hard requirement and I'm stuck using BASH for this.
The whole configuration process involves the parsing of several YAML files and takes about a second to complete. I'd like to only have to do this once in order to preserve performance. Upon completion, all of the configured values are placed in a global associative array declared as follows:
declare -gA CONFIG_VALUES
A basic helper function has been written for accessing this array:
# A wrapper for accessing the CONFIG_VALUES array.
function get_config_value {
local key="${1^^}"
local output
output="${CONFIG_VALUES[${key}]}"
echo "$output"
}
This works perfectly fine when all of the commands are run within the same shell. This even works when the get_config_value function is called from a child process. Where this breaks down is when it's called from a child process and the value in the array contains slashes. This leads to errors such as the following (line 156 is "output="${CONFIG_VALUES[${key}]}"):
config.sh: line 156: path/to/some/file: syntax error: operand expected (error token is "/to/some/file")
This is particularly obnoxious because it seems to be reading the value "path/to/some/file" just fine. It simply decides to announce a syntax error after doing so and falls over dead instead of echoing the value.
I've been trying to circumvent this by running the array lookup in a subshell, capturing the syntax failure, and grepping it for the value I need:
# A wrapper for accessing the CONFIG_VALUES array.
function get_config_value {
local key="${1^^}"
local output
if output="$(echo "${CONFIG_VALUES[${key}]}" 2>&1)"; then
echo "$output"
else
grep -oP "(?<=: ).*(?=: syntax error: operand expected)" <<< "$output"
fi
}
Unfortunately, it seems that BASH won't let me ignore the "syntax error" like that. I'm not sure where to go from here (well... Python, but I don't get to make that decision).
Any ideas?
To get into detail, I am writing a shell script to automate usage of a plugin.
To do so, I am using xclip to pull a url from the x clipboard, then append it at the end of a command with arguments and execute the combined command.
I use url="$(xclip -o)" to get the url from the clipboard, then com='youtube-dl -x --audio-format mp3 ' to set the initial string.
I've been clumsily stumbling through attempts at printf and defining new strings as str=$com $url (and many variants of such. I haven't written anything in a long time and know I'm screwing up something pretty basic. Anybody able to help?
to concatenate two strings with a space in an assignment
str=$com' '$url
can be also written
str=$com" "$url
or
str="$com $url"
then the command can just be launched
$str
however
str=$com $url
is the syntax to call $url passing environment variable str=$com
also if url was a string which could contains spaces or tabs anan array should be used instead to avoid splitting when called
str=( $com "$url" )
"{str[#]}"
I've got a bash script accepting several files as input which are mixed with various script's options, for example:
bristat -p log1.log -m lo2.log log3.log -u
I created an array where i save all the index where i can find files in the script's call, so in this case it would be an arrat of 3 elements where
arr_pos[0] = 2
arr_pos[1] = 4
arr_pos[3] = 5
Later in the script I must call "head" and "grep" in those files and i tried this way
head -n 1 ${arr_pos[0]}
but i get this error non runtime
head: cannot open `2' for reading: No such file or directory
I tried various parenthesis combinations, but I can't find which one is correct.
The problem here is that ${arr_pos[0]} stores the index in which you have the file name, not the file name itself -- so you can't simply head it. The array storing your arguments is given by $#.
A possible way to access the data you want is:
#! /bin/bash
declare -a arr_pos=(2 4 5)
echo ${#:${arr_pos[0]}:1}
Output:
log1.log
The expansion ${#:${arr_pos[0]}:1} means you're taking the values ranging from the index ${arr_pos[0]} in the array $#, to the element of index ${arr_pos[0]} + 1 in the same array $#.
Another way to do so, as pointed by #flaschenpost, is to eval the index preceded by $, so that you'd be accessing the array of arguments. Although it works very well, it may be risky depending on who is going to run your script -- as they may add commands in the argument line.
Anyway, you may should try to loop through the entire array of arguments by the beginning of the script, hashing the values you find, so that you won't be in trouble while trying to fetch each value later. You may loop, using a for + case ... esac, and store the values in associative arrays.
I think eval is what you need.
#!/bin/bash
arr_pos[0]=2;
arr_pos[1]=4;
arr_pos[2]=5;
eval "cat \$${arr_pos[1]}"
For me that works.