bash - checking if a string contains # - bash

Question

I am trying to read a parameter file in a shell script and would want to skip the lines which start with "#". Have been trying it on Ubuntu VM (default bash) and for something that I can't understand, it doesn't seem to work.
Following is the pseudo-code that I am using:
while read line
do
if [ grep -q "#" <<< "$line" ]; then
## Do nothing (Commented Out)
echo "$line Line is Commented out"
elif [ "$line" = "" ]; then
## Do nothing (Blank Line)
echo "Blank line"
else
#echo "read line is $line"
...some logic here
fi
done <input_file.ini
This yields the the following error: Syntax error: redirection unexpected
The if [[ $line == *#* ]] construct doesn't seem to work. My earlier experience was on AIX where everything worked fine.
Could someone guide me what I am doing wrong here?
PS: On a related note, how do I handle cases where I don't want to do anything? e.g. when there is no '#' character in the read line, I don't want to do anything. I can't leave my if block blank so I am just using echo 'some random' text. My task works good but just wanted to understand what's a good practice to handle this.

Answer 1

Your code is clearly running with /bin/sh, not bash.
An alternative to [[ $line = *"#"* ]] that works with /bin/sh is case.
Thus, the following will work with /bin/sh, or when invoked with sh yourscript:
#!/bin/sh
while read -r line; do : line="$line"
case $line in
*"#"*) echo "Line is commented out: $line";;
"") echo "Line is empty" ;;
*) key=${line%%=*}
value=${line#*=}
eval "$key="'$line' # unsafe, but works with /bin/sh, which doesn't have better
# indirect assignment approaches.
printf '%s\t\t-\t\t%s\n' "$key" "$value"
;;
esac
done <input_file.ini
Alternately, consider putting in a guard to handle the case when your script is invoked with a non-bash shell:
#!/bin/bash
case $BASH_VERSION in
'')
echo "ERROR: Run with a non-bash shell" >&2
if [ "$tried_reexec" ]; then
echo "ERROR: Already attempted reexec and failed" >&2
exit 1
fi
if [ -s "$0" ]; then
export tried_reexec=1
exec bash "$0" "$#"
fi
;;
esac
while read -r line; do
if [[ $line = *"#"* ]]; then
echo "Line is Commented out: $line"
elif [[ "$line" = "" ]]; then
echo "Blank line"
else
key=${line%%=*}; value=${line#*=}
printf -v "$key" %s "$value"
printf '%s\t\t-\t\t%s\n' "$key" "$value"
fi
done <input_file.ini

Answer 2

I really wasn't able to figure out the exact problem with double [[ ]] and the character search in a string. Thanks to everyone who tried to help me out. However this was acting as a deterrent and I didn't want to continue to fiddle for too long, I used a slightly different approach to handle my situation.
The following code works for me now:
while read line
do
first_char=`echo $line | cut -c 1`
if [ "$first_char" = "#" ]; then
: "do nothing here. Line is commented out"
elif [ "$line" = "" ]; then
: "do nothing here. Blank line"
else
KEY="$(echo $line | cut -d '=' -f1)"
VALUE="$(echo $line | cut -d '=' -f2)"
printf \v "$KEY" %s "$VALUE"
echo "$KEY\t\t-\t\t$VALUE"
fi
done < ${SCHEDULER_LOC}/inputs/script_params.ini
Also I was able to learn few things so incorporated them as well. I did get few negative scores for this question. Understandably so since this might be rudimentary for the experts but it was a genuine problem I was seeking some guidance on. Still, I am thankful that I learnt something new. Kudos to the community.