I have a simple script
...
dir=`pwd`
echo $dir
cd ./selenium-grid-1.0.8/
CMD="ant -Dport=$1 -Dhost=$2 -DhubURL=http://172.16.1.137:4444 -Denvironment="$3"-DseleniumArgs="-firefoxProfileTemplate C:/software/rc_user_ffprofile -multiWindow" launch-remote-control"
echo $CMD
$CMD 2>&1
#End
Whenever i run this command, i get: ./register_rc.sh: line 16: C:/software/rc_user_ffprofile: is a directory
this directory has to be an argument to the -firefoxProfileTemplate option. How do i include that in this string without it baffing??
help
thnx
I believe your command should read:
CMD="ant -Dport=$1 -Dhost=$2 -DhubURL=http://172.16.1.137:4444 -Denvironment=\"$3\"-DseleniumArgs=\"-firefoxProfileTemplate C:/software/rc_user_ffprofile -multiWindow\" launch-remote-control"
The backslashes are used to "escape" the quotation marks.
The answers here telling to escape your quotes are wrong. That will pass those quotes directly to ant, I doubt that's what you want.
What's the reason to store the command in a variable? It's a very bad idea. Why can't you just write that command as is? If you want to achieve modularity or code reuse, then define a function.
If you want to display executed commands, use set -x.
Looks like you're mixing your quotes up. Take a look at the syntax highlighting that StackOverflow did for you.
I recommend generating the CMD variable in multiple steps, and make sure you \-escape your quotes.
Related
The following simplified version of a script I'll call logit obviously just appends everything but $1 in a text file, so I can keep track of time like this:
$ logit Started work on default theme
But bash expansion gets confused by quotes of any kind. What I'd like is to do things like
$ logit Don't forget a dark mode
But when that happens of course shell expansion rules cause a burp:
quote>
I know this works:
# Yeah yeah I can enclose it in quotes but I'd prefer not to
$ logit "Don't forget a dark mode"
Is there any way to somehow collect the remainder of the command line before bash gets to it, without having to use quotes around my command line?
Here's a minimal working version of the script.
#!/bin/bash
log_file=~/log.txt
now=$(date +"%T %r")
echo "${now} ${#:1}" >> $log_file
Is there any way to somehow collect the remainder of the command line before bash gets to it, without having to use quotes around my command line?
No. There is no "before bash gets into it" time. Bash reads the input you are typing, Bash parses the input you are typing, there is nothing in between or "before". There is only Bash.
You can: use a different shell or write your own. Note that quotes parsing like in shell is very common, you may consider that it could be better for you to understand and get used to it.
you can use a backslash "\" before the single quote
$ logit Don\'t forget a dark mode
I have a shell script that I'm trying to write to a file using multiple variables, but one of them is being ignored.
#!/bin/bash
dir=/folder
name=bob
date=`date +%Y`
command > $dir/$name_$date.ext
The $name is being ignored. How can I fix this?
Have you noticed that the _ was "ignored" as well? That's a big hint.
If you use set -u, you'll see the following:
-bash: name_: unbound variable
The way bash parses it, the underscore is part of the variable name.
There are several ways to fix the problem.
The cleanest is the ${var} construct which separate the variable name from its surroundings.
You can also use quotation in various ways to force the right parsing, e.g.: "$dir/$name""_$date.ext"
And in case your variables might contain spaces (now, or in the future) use quotation for words.
command >"$dir/${name}_$date.ext"
command >"${dir}/${name}_${date}.ext"
Both these are fine, just pick one style and stick to it.
I'm working on what should be a very simple BASH script. What I want to do is a pull an image from a webcamera using curl and write it to a file whose name is datestamped.
#! /bin/bash
DATE=$(date +%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M)
DIRECTORY1=home/manager/security_images/Studio_1/
TARGET1=${DIRECTORY1}${DATE}.jpg
curl http://web#192.168.180.211/snapshot.cgi > $TARGET1
When I try to run this I am told that there is no such file or directory. I believe this is due to an error in my escaping but I have tried seemingly every combination of quotation marks around the variables at each stage and still can't get it to work. I just don't understand what is going wrong and could really use some pointers towards what I'm doing wrong.
Many thanks
No, it’s just a typo.
DIRECTORY1=home/manager/security_images/Studio_1/
^^
Should be
DIRECTORY1=/home/manager/security_images/Studio_1/
of course.
As for escaping, even though only safe characters are used now, so quotes are technically superfluous, quoting out all $variables in every line by default is a good habit in shell scripting, there are very few cases when you do not want to use them.
Double quoting the redirection target should be enough:
curl http://web#192.168.180.211/snapshot.cgi > "$TARGET1"
Just make sure the path to it exists. You can run your script with
set -xv
to see how variables are interpolated.
I want to write a script that will change to different directories depending on my input. something like this:
test.sh:
#!/bin/bash
ssh machine001 '(chdir ~/dev$1; pwd)'
But as I run ./test.sh 2 it still goes to ~/dev. It seems that my argument gets ignored. Am I doing anything very stupid here?
Bash ignores any variable syntax inside the single-quoted(') strings. You need double quotes(") in order to make a substitution:
#!/bin/bash
ssh machine001 "(chdir ~/dev$1; pwd)"
The parameter is enclosed in single quotes, so it isn't expanded on the local side. Use double-quotes instead.
#!/bin/bash
ssh machine001 "chdir ~/dev$1; pwd"
There's no need for the (...), since you are only running the pair of commands then exiting.
Hopefully this should be a simple one... Here is my test.sh file:
#!/bin/bash
patch_file="/home/my dir/vtk.patch"
cmd="svn up \"$patch_file\""
$cmd
Note the space in "my dir". When I execute it,
$ ./test.sh
Skipped '"/home/my'
Skipped 'dir/vtk.patch"'
I have no idea how to accommodate the space in the variable and still execute the command. But executing this the following on the bash shell works without problem.
$ svn up "/home/my dir/vtk.patch" #WORKS!!!
Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated! I am using the bash from cygwin on windows.
Use eval $cmd, instead of plain $cmd
Did you try escaping the space?
As a rule UNIX shells don't like non-standard characters in file names or folder names. The normal way of handling this is to escape the offending character. Try:
patch_file="/home/my\ dir/vtk.patch"
Note the backslash.