#!/bin/bash
jobname="job_201312161447_0003"
jobname_pre=${jobname:0:16}
jobname_post=${jobname:17}
This bash script gives me Bad substitution error on ubuntu. Any help will be highly appreciated.
The default shell (/bin/sh) under Ubuntu points to dash, not bash.
me#pc:~$ readlink -f $(which sh)
/bin/dash
So if you chmod +x your_script_file.sh and then run it with ./your_script_file.sh, or if you run it with bash your_script_file.sh, it should work fine.
Running it with sh your_script_file.sh will not work because the hashbang line will be ignored and the script will be interpreted by dash, which does not support that string substitution syntax.
I had the same problem. Make sure your script didnt have
#!/bin/sh
at the top of your script. Instead, you should add
#!/bin/bash
For others that arrive here, this exact message will also appear when using the env variable syntax for commands, for example ${which sh} instead of the correct $(which sh)
Your script syntax is valid bash and good.
Possible causes for the failure:
Your bash is not really bash but ksh or some other shell which doesn't understand bash's parameter substitution. Because your script looks fine and works with bash.
Do ls -l /bin/bash and check it's really bash and not sym-linked to some other shell.
If you do have bash on your system, then you may be executing your script the wrong way like: ksh script.sh or sh script.sh (and your default shell is not bash). Since you have proper shebang, if you have bash ./script.sh or bash ./script.sh should be fine.
Try running the script explicitly using bash command rather than just executing it as executable.
Also, make sure you don't have an empty string for the first line of your script.
i.e. make sure #!/bin/bash is the very first line of your script.
Not relevant to your example, but you can also get the Bad substitution error in Bash for any substitution syntax that Bash does not recognize. This could be:
Stray whitespace. E.g. bash -c '${x }'
A typo. E.g. bash -c '${x;-}'
A feature that was added in a later Bash version. E.g. bash -c '${x#Q}' before Bash 4.4.
If you have multiple substitutions in the same expression, Bash may not be very helpful in pinpointing the problematic expression. E.g.:
$ bash -c '"${x } multiline string
$y"'
bash: line 1: ${x } multiline string
$y: bad substitution
Both - bash or dash - work, but the syntax needs to be:
FILENAME=/my/complex/path/name.ext
NEWNAME=${FILENAME%ext}new
I was adding a dollar sign twice in an expression with curly braces in bash:
cp -r $PROJECT_NAME ${$PROJECT_NAME}2
instead of
cp -r $PROJECT_NAME ${PROJECT_NAME}2
I have found that this issue is either caused by the marked answer or you have a line or space before the bash declaration
Looks like "+x" causes problems:
root#raspi1:~# cat > /tmp/btest
#!/bin/bash
jobname="job_201312161447_0003"
jobname_pre=${jobname:0:16}
jobname_post=${jobname:17}
root#raspi1:~# chmod +x /tmp/btest
root#raspi1:~# /tmp/btest
root#raspi1:~# sh -x /tmp/btest
+ jobname=job_201312161447_0003
/tmp/btest: 4: /tmp/btest: Bad substitution
in my case (under ubuntu 18.04), I have mixed $( ${} ) that works fine:
BACKUPED_NB=$(ls ${HOST_BACKUP_DIR}*${CONTAINER_NAME}.backup.sql.gz | wc --lines)
full example here.
I used #!bin/bash as well tried all approaches like no line before or after #!bin/bash.
Then also tried using +x but still didn't work.
Finally i tried running the script ./script.sh it worked fine.
#!/bin/bash
jobname="job_201312161447_0003"
jobname_post=${jobname:17}
root#ip-10-2-250-36:/home/bitnami/python-module/workflow_scripts# sh jaru.sh
jaru.sh: 3: jaru.sh: Bad substitution
root#ip-10-2-250-36:/home/bitnami/python-module/workflow_scripts# ./jaru.sh
root#ip-10-2-250-36:/home/bitnami/python-module/workflow_scripts#
I know how to do it with for but is there an easy way?
touch temp/foo
for i in $(find my-dir/* -newer temp/foo);
do
gsutil -m cp -r "$i" gs://my-bucket/
done
The gsutil cp -I parameter should help with this. It allows you to read the list of files to copy from stdin.
I think this would work:
find my-dir/* -newer temp/foo | gsutil -m cp -I gs://my-bucket/
System: Arch Linux in VirtualBox 5.1.26 on Windows 10 Host
I try to use perl like sed in the terminal for in place substitution the input file:
perl -i -p -e 's/orig/replace/g' input_file
But I always get:
Can't remove input_file Text file busy, skipping file
This happens only if the file is inside a VirtualBox vboxsf share. With all other tools (sed, mv, vim or whatever) it is no problem to change the file.
This problem seems to be related to:
https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/2553
https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=4437
I can't find any solution googling around :(
Update:
Using perl -i.bak -p -e 's/orig/replace/g' input_file I get a similar message:
Can't rename input_file to input_file.bak: Text file busy, skipping file.
This is exactly the same message as gedit shows:
So it is the same behavior, but googling around I can only find the Gedit topic. It seems noone has noticed this with perl -i.
While you are running a unix OS, you are still using a Windows file system. NTFS doesn't support anonymous files like unix file systems, and Perl -i requires support for anonymous files.
The workaround is to use a temporary files by using -i<ext> (e.g. -i~) instead of -i.
I have same problem. My solution is a bashscript. Copy files to tmp. Search and Replace. Overwrite tmp-files with original-files. Than delete tmp-dir. If you need you can use parameter in script for dynamic search&replace and create an alias for call the script direct and everywhere.
#!/bin/bash
echo "Removing text from .log files..."
echo "Creating tmp-dir..."
mkdir /tmp/myTmpFiles/
echo "Copy .log files to tmp..."
cp -v /home/user/sharedfolder/*.log /tmp/myTmpFiles/
echo "Search and Replace in tmp-files..."
perl -i -p0e 's/orig/replace/g' /tmp/myTmpFiles/*.log
echo "Copy .log to sharedfolder"
cp -v /tmp/myTmpFiles/*.log /home/user/sharedfolder/
echo "Remove tmp-dir..."
rm -vr /tmp/myTmpFiles/
echo "Done..."
I inherited a long bash script that I recently needed to modify. The bash script is run as a cronjob on a daily basis. I am decent with bash scripting, but I do not know much about Perl.
I had to substitute all "rm" commands with a call to a perl script that does something similar (for security purposes). This script was not written by me, so there is no -f flag to skip the confirmation prompt. Therefore, to automate this script I pipe "yes" to the script.
Here is an example where I am sequentially deleting two directories:
echo REMOVING FILES TO SAVE DISK SPACE
echo "yes | sudo nice -n -10 perl <path_to_delete_script.pl> -dir <del_dir1>"
yes | sudo nice -n -10 perl <path_to_delete_script.pl> -dir <del_dir1>
echo "yes | sudo nice -n -10 perl <path_to_delete_script.pl> -dir <del_dir2>"
yes | sudo nice -n -10 perl <path_to_delete_script.pl> -dir <del_dir2>
echo DONE.
In my output file, I see the following:
REMOVING FILES TO SAVE DISK SPACE
yes | sudo nice -n -10 perl <path_to_delete_script.pl> -dir <del_dir1>
yes | sudo nice -n -10 perl <path_to_delete_script.pl> -dir <del_dir2>
DONE.
It does not appear that the perl script has run. Yet when I copy and paste those two commands into the terminal, they both run fine.
Any help is appreciated. Thank you in advance.
You simply put do
yes | ./myscript.pl
Thanks for all the comments. I ended up changing the group and permissions of the tool and all output files. This allowed me to run the perl script without using "sudo," which others pointed out is bad practice.
I'm running matlab jobs on a remote server. The documentation says to run 'script.m', use the following command:
bsub -o script.out -R "rusage[matlab=1:duration=1]" matlab -nodisplay script
This doesn't seem to do much (or anything).
However,
bsub -o script.out -R "rusage[matlab=1:duration=1]" matlab -nodisplay -r "script"
works though. Any idea why the -r and quotation marks were omitted in the documentation? Was this simply a mistake, or am I misunderstanding something.
That looks just plain wrong to me, MATLAB has always needed the -r option to run a script.