Mnetgen: bash-files and syntax errors - where's the bug? - bash

Question

I want to create Multicommodity Min Cost Flow instances with the help of
Mnetgen but I have problems with the file called "batch" whose first lines are given by
# Batch file for generating MMCF problems with the mnetgen random generator
#
# For each n in {64, 128, 256} generates 12 instances for each pair (n, k)
# with k in {4, 8, 16 , ... , n}, using as input the parameters found
# in pr{n}.{k}/{n}-{k}-{h}.inp for h in {1, ... , 12}. The instances
# are left in the directory pr{n}.{k}
#
# At the end of the file, commented out, there are the instructions for
# generating the groups with n = 512 and n = 768: in the latter case,
# however, only 6 instances for each group are generated.
#
# In a Unix environment, simply type "source batch" or "csh < batch"
foreach i ( 64 )
foreach j ( 4 8 16 32 64 )
foreach h ( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 )
mnetgen pr$i.$j/$i-$j-$h.inp pr$i.$j/$i-$j-$h
end
end
end
...
What did I so far? First I added #include <cstring> to mnetgen.c to avoid errors. Then I typed make to get an executable file mnetgen. The last step would be to generate the instances by using the batch-file.
Using the hint in last comment line I get either
bash: batch: Zeile 14: Syntaxfehler beim unerwarteten Wort »(«
bash: batch: Zeile 14: 'foreach i ( 64 )'
or
mnetgen: Command not found.
How can I fix that?

Answer 1

You are trying to run a csh shell in bash.
To fix that, either run
csh myshell
or add on the first line:
#!/bin/csh
When running your command, Unix/linux will check the first line which will be seen as a kind of magic number and will prefix it by /bin/csh.
(there are better ways to do that maybe with #!/bin/env csh)
and for your mnetgen command which is not found, I suggest that you add the full path of your command in your script or add it to the system PATH.