I found a nifty little shell script that I wanted to use from this website here. I have followed everything step-by-step, but receive the following error when running this on my CentOS box.
./deploy: line 3: =: command not found
Line 3 only contains...
$ERRORSTRING = "Error. Please make sure you've indicated correct parameters"
I've tried toying around with a bit, but don't understand why it won't accept the "=" character. Is there something wrong with the script, or is it merely something different in the way that my server processes the script?
Thanks!
Gah, that script is full of bad scripting practices (in addition to the outright error you're running into). Here's the outright error:
$ERRORSTRING = "Error. Please make sure you've indicated correct parameters"
As devnull pointed out, this should be:
ERRORSTRING="Error. Please make sure you've indicated correct parameters"
A couple of lines down (and again near the end), we have:
echo $ERRORSTRING;
...which works, but contains two bad ideas: a variable reference without double-quotes around it (which will sometimes be parsed in unexpected ways), and a semicolon at the end of the line (which is a sign that someone is trying to write C or Java or something in a shell script). Use this instead:
echo "$ERRORSTRING"
The next line is:
elif [ $1 == "live" ]
...which might work, depending on whether the value of $1 has spaces, or is defined-but-blank, or anything like that (again, use double-quotes to prevent misparsing!). Also, the == comparison operator is nonstandard -- it'll work, because bash supports it in its [ ... ] builtin syntax, but if you're counting on having bash extensions available, why not use the much cleaner [[ ... ]] replacement? Any of these would be a better replacement for that line:
elif [ "$1" = "live" ]
elif [[ $1 == "live" ]]
elif [[ "$1" == "live" ]]
Personally, I prefer the last. The double-quotes aren't needed in this particular case, but IMO it's safest to just double-quote all variable references unless there's a specific reason not to. A bit further down, there's a elif [ $2 == "go" ] that the same comments apply to.
BTW, there's a good sanity-checking tool for shell scripts at www.shellcheck.net. It's not quite as picky as I am (e.g. it doesn't flag semicolons at the ends of lines), but it pointed out all of the actual errors in this script...
"Devnulls" answer was correct -- I had to remove the spaces around the "=" and remove the "$" from that line as well. The end result was...
ERRORSTRING="Error. Please make sure you've indicated correct parameters"
I've upvoted Devnull and gniourf_gniourf's comments.
Thank you to all whom have assisted!
Related
I have a script like this:
#!/bin/bash
x=${1:-20}
for ((i=1;i<=x;i++))
{
if ((i%3==0))
{
echo 'Fizz'
}
echo $i
}
I get an error color on the last brace in VIM and when I try to run the script I get a "syntax error near unexpected token" for that same brace. Without the nested if statement, this will print 1 through 20 on a new line for each number, which is the expected outcome. If the number is divisible by 3, it should print Fizz instead of that number. I'm not as worried about how to implement the replacement, that should be easy to figure out, but what I don't understand is why I cannot use a brace to close the for loop. If I take out the brace, I get an error that says end of file expected. So what is the proper syntax for ending a for loop with a nested if statement? I've looked around online and here on stack but haven't found a similar format to what I am trying to do. I don't like the
for f in *
format as it is not as easy to read for someone coming from a different coding language and I like to keep my code looking very similar across different languages (I use comments too, but just the same, I try to keep things as similar as possible which is why I used (( )) with the for loop.)
If I comment out the if statement and leave everything else intact, the error disappears and it will print
1
Fizz
2
Fizz
etc.
Any insight into this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
So here is what I was able to figure out thanks to #Cyrus:
x=${1:-20}
for ((i=1;i<=x;i++))
do
if ((i%3==0))
then
echo 'Fizz'
else
echo $i
fi
done
In many ways bash is simpler than most other languages but that makes it harder to work with when you are used to "higher" level languages.
So, to help out anyone else that's like me and just starting to code with bash, here is the full program I made, with comments as to why I coded it the way I did. If there are errors in my explanation or my formatting style, please point them out. Thanks! This was kind of fun to write, call me crazy.
# This will literally just print the string inside the single quotes on the screen
echo 'Try running this again but with something like this: fizzbuzz 25 pot kettle black'
# The $0 is the first index, in other words the file name of the executable,
# this will set the default value of x to 20 but will allow the user to input
# something else if they want.
x=${1:-20}
# This is the same but with string variables
f=${2:-FizzBuzz}
g=${3:-Fizz}
b=${4:-Buzz}
# We start the index variable at 1 because it's based on the input,
# otherwise it would echo 0 thru 19
for ((i=1;i<=x;1++))
do
# I recommend using (( )) for if statement arithmetic operations
# since the syntax is similar to other programming languages
if ((i%3==0 && i%5==0)); then echo $f
# you need to use a semicolon to separate if and then if they are
# on the same line, otherwise you can just go to the next line for
# your then statement
else if ((i%3==0)); then echo $g
else if ((i%5==0)); then echo $b
else echo $1
# You need fi in order to finish an if then statement
fi fi fi
done
I'm trying to adapt some code I found for a monitor layout script.
...
while read l
do
dir=$(dirname $l);
status=$(cat $l);
dev=$(echo $dir | cut -d\- -f 2-);
if [ $(expr match $dev "HDMI") != "0" ]
...
As per the Bash man page: A semicolon can either be a metacharacter or a control operator.
I understand the metacharacter use is for consecutive commands on the same line. Is it being used as a control operator in this case? I haven't used it this way before and the script functions without it. I don't want to remove or keep it without understanding its purpose.
There might have been some thinking process going on along the lines of
"this should execute even if concatenated into a single line", or
"this was created from a single line originally".
But in that case you would need additional semicolons at the end of the while and if lines to make it work.
So, no, there is no purpose to them other than a bad habit by the programmer in question.
No, you will not need a semicolon in this case. You would need a semicolon in bash if there is more then one command on a single line. Here is an example of where a semicolon is often used in bash to make it more readable:
if [ $a -gt 12 ]; then
You see here, the if and the then are two different commands, but you can use the semicolon to put them on the same line, which makes the code easier to read in my opinion.
As per #anubhava's comment on the question"
No there is no apparent good reasons for this...
I have a .sh file in which I have written the following function. The command that calls this function will have the arguments- file1.war, file2.war ... fileN.war and other arguments.
I want to do a certain operation to the .war files and something else for the arguments after it. So I have written a while loop that will run till the arguments are .war files, and when an argument is encountered without .war extention, it will exit the loop and run the code below it for the rest of the arguments.
Here is the function in .sh file :
copyWarFiles()
{
downloadFileName=$1
shift 1
extn=".war"
while [ condition ]
do
log "war file $downloadFileName .."
#some operation..
downloadFileName=$1
shift 1
done
#operations for the rest of the arguments...
}
What should I give as condition that will return true if $downloadFileName ends with .war? I tried giving
$downloadFileName==*".war" (following the accepted answer in this )
and I also tried this :
`test "${downloadFileName#*$extn}" != "$downloadFileName"`
(following the accepted answer here) where extn is another variable I declared and assigned to .war.
But in both the cases, I see that it never enters the while loop. I think I have gone wrong with the syntax or something. Thank you for your help in advance.
What should I give as condition that will return true if $downloadFileName ends with ".war"? I tried giving $downloadFileName==*".war" […]
Bash, unlike typical programming languages, doesn't recognize == as a special operator; it's just yet another argument to the [ command. So you need to set it off with spaces.
Also, the [ command doesn't support having a pattern on the right-hand-side of ==; you need to use the special [[ ... ]] notation.
So:
while [[ $downloadFileName == *".war" ]]
Note, though, that the double-quotes around .war don't actually have any effect: none of the characters in .war are special characters that need to be quoted. Conversely, it's a best practice to always put variable expansions in double-quotes, in case the variables contain special characters. ([[ actually negates most of the problematic behaviors, but it's just a good habit to be in.)
So:
while [[ "$downloadFileName" == *.war ]]
Why not just:
check=`echo $downloadFile | grep '\.war'`
if [ -n "$check" ]; then
echo $downloadFile ends in .war
fi
This is part of a bigger project but I can't get this part to work and I'm having a brain fart.
#!/bin/bash
echo -n "Do you wish to download/checkout the source code? > "
read text
if ["$text" = "Yes"]
then
do something
else
do something else
fi
It should simply be reading in what the user types and then go through a simple conditional. but I get this error
./check.sh: line 6: [Yes: command not found
I thought I had formatted the shell script correctly but I guess not.
Add spaces after brackets:
if [[ "$text" = "Yes" ]]
When performing operations on strings it's always a good idea to use double square brackets. It will make your code work properly with spaces and new lines.
I'm writing a quick shell script to build and execute my programs in one fell swoop.
I've gotten that part down, but I'd like to include a little if/else to catch bad extensions - if it's not an .adb (it's an Ada script), it won't let the rest of the program execute.
My two-part question is:
How do I grab just the extension? Or is it easier to just say *.adb?
What would the if/else statement look like? I have limited experience in Bash so I understand that's a pretty bad question.
Thanks!
There are ways to extract the extension, but you don't really need to:
if [[ $filename == *.adb ]] ; then
. . . # this code is run if $filename ends in .adb
else
. . . # this code is run otherwise
fi
(The trouble with extracting the extension is that you'd have to define what you mean by "extension". What is the extension of a file named foo? How about a file named report.2012.01.29? So general-purpose extension-extracting code is tricky, and not worth it if your goal is just to confirm that file has a specific extension.)
There are multiple ways to do it. Which is best depends in part on what the subsequent operations will be.
Given a variable $file, you might want to test what the extension is. In that case, you probably do best with:
extn=${file##*.}
This deletes everything up to the last dot in the name, slashes and all, leaving you with adb if the file name was adafile.adb.
If, on the other hand, you want to do different things depending on the extension, you might use:
case "$file" in
(*.adb) ...do things with .adb files;;
(*.pqr) ...do things with .pqr files;;
(*) ...cover the rest - maybe an error;;
esac
If you want the name without the extension, you can do things the more traditional way with:
base=$(basename $file .adb)
path=$(dirname $file)
The basename command gives you the last component of the file name with the extension .adb stripped off. The dirname command gives you the path leading to the last component of the file name, defaulting to . (the current directory) if there is no specified path.
The more recent way to do those last two operations is:
base=${file##/}
path=${file%/*}
The advantage of these is that they are built-in operations that do not invoke a separate executable, so they are quicker. The disadvantage of the built-ins is that if you have a name that ends with a slash, the built-in treats it as significant but the command does not (and the command is probably giving you the more desirable behaviour, unless you want to argue GIGO).
There are other techniques available too. The expr command is an old, rather heavy-weight mechanism that would not normally be used (but it is very standard). There may be other techniques using the (( ... )), $(( ... )) and [[ ... ]] operators to evaluate various sorts of expression.
To get just the extension from the file path and name, use parameter expansion:
${filename##*.} # deletes everything to the last dot
To compare it with the string adb, just do
if [[ ${filename##*.} != adb ]] ; then
echo Invalid extension at "$filename".
exit 1
fi
or, using 'else`:
if [[ ${filename##*.} != adb ]] ; then
echo Invalid extension at "$filename".
else
# Run the script...
fi
Extension:
fileext=`echo $filename | sed 's_.*\.__'`
Test
if [[ x"${fileext}" = "xadb" ]] ; then
#do something
fi