Script fails and says unexpected token >'

Question

While running the following script, I get the errors. How to solve this?

  1 #!/bin/bash
  2 # Show colored output if running interactively
  3 if [ -t 1 ] ; then
  4     export ANSIBLE_FORCE_COLOR=true
  5 fi
  6 # Log everything from this script into _quickstart.log
  7 echo "$0 $@" > _quickstart.log
  8 exec &> >(tee -i -a _quickstart.log )
  9 # With LANG set to everything else than C completely undercipherable errors
 10 # like "file not found" and decoding errors will start to appear during scripts
 11 # or even ansible modules
 12 LANG=C

[root@localhost quickstart_images]# sh quickstart.sh -u file:///usr/share/quickstart_images/undercloud-mitaka.qcow2 localhost
quickstart.sh: line 8: syntax error near unexpected token `>'
quickstart.sh: line 8: `exec &> >(tee -i -a _quickstart.log )'
[root@localhost quickstart_images]#

Your script mention bash as an interpreter do not try to use it with sh. Try to execute your script with bash -x — Kiwy, Feb 28 '18 at 08:22
bash quickstart.sh file:///usr/share/quickstart_images/undercloud-mitaka.qcow2 localhost This one worked. — Krishna, Feb 28 '18 at 09:21

Yaron · Answer 1 · 2018-02-28T08:29:52.073

First: instead of running your bash script using sh make it execute-able:

chmod +x quickstart.sh

And execute it by its own:

./quickstart.sh -u file:///usr/share/quickstart_images/undercloud-mitaka.qcow2 localhost

Second: It seems like you have a problem in your bash script:

Running your script in https://www.shellcheck.net/ reported the following error in the script:

Line 7:
echo "$0 $@" > _quickstart.log
         ^-- SC2145: Argument mixes string and array. Use * or separate argument.

The problem you are facing is mixing string and array.

You can solve the problem using one of the following methods:

Avoid the mix between string and array by separating the arguments using two different quotes:
```
echo "$0" "$@" > _quickstart.log
```

Or

Replacing $@ with $* which replace the array with a string
```
echo "$0 $*" > _quickstart.log
```

Note the differences between $@ and $*:

Bash Special Parameters

($*) Expands to the positional parameters, starting from one. When the expansion is not within double quotes, each positional parameter expands to a separate word. In contexts where it is performed, those words are subject to further word splitting and pathname expansion. When the expansion occurs within double quotes, it expands to a single word with the value of each parameter separated by the first character of the IFS special variable. That is, "$*" is equivalent to "$1c$2c…", where c is the first character of the value of the IFS variable. If IFS is unset, the parameters are separated by spaces. If IFS is null, the parameters are joined without intervening separators.

($@) Expands to the positional parameters, starting from one. When the expansion occurs within double quotes, each parameter expands to a separate word. That is, "$@" is equivalent to "$1" "$2" …. If the double-quoted expansion occurs within a word, the expansion of the first parameter is joined with the beginning part of the original word, and the expansion of the last parameter is joined with the last part of the original word. When there are no positional parameters, "$@" and $@ expand to nothing (i.e., they are removed).

Script fails and says unexpected token >'

1 Answers1