Bash Script – Unable to Assign Output of Nested Commands to Variable

bashshell-scriptvariable

I was trying to assign below command(which choose the random line from file) to a variable, but not working.

givinv@87-109:~$ head -$((${RANDOM} % `wc -l < file` + 1)) file | tail -1
cower
givinv@87-109:~$

Below the the error I am getting while trying to assign it to a variable.

givinv@87-109:~$ VARIA=`head -$((${RANDOM} % `wc -l < file` + 1)) file | tail -1`
bash: command substitution: line 1: unexpected EOF while looking for matching `)'
bash: command substitution: line 2: syntax error: unexpected end of file
bash: command substitution: line 1: syntax error near unexpected token `)'
bash: command substitution: line 1: ` + 1)) file | tail -1'
-l: command not found
givinv@87-109:~$

I even tried same with for loop and not working::

givinv@87-109:~$ for i in `head -$((${RANDOM} % `wc -l < file` + 1)) file | tail -1`;do echo $i ;done
bash: syntax error near unexpected token `<'
givinv@87-109:~$

Best Answer

It's not working because you are attempting to nest unescaped backticks:

VARIA=`head -$((${RANDOM} % `wc -l < file` + 1)) file | tail -1`

That actually attempts to run head -$((${RANDOM} % as a single command first, and that gives you the 2 first errors:

$ VARIA=`head -$((${RANDOM} % `
bash: command substitution: line 1: unexpected EOF while looking for matching `)'
bash: command substitution: line 2: syntax error: unexpected end of file

Then, it tries to run

wc -l < file` + 1)) file | tail -1`

Which means it tries to evaluate + 1)) file | tail -1 (which is between the backticks), and that gives you the next errors:

$ wc -l < file` + 1)) file | tail -1`
bash: command substitution: line 1: syntax error near unexpected token `)'
bash: command substitution: line 1: ` + 1)) file | tail -1'

You can get around this by escaping the backticks:

VARIA=`head -$((${RANDOM} % \`wc -l < file\` + 1)) file | tail -1`

However, as a general rule, it is usually better not to use backticks at all. You should almost always use $() instead. It is more robust and can be nested indefinitely with a simpler syntax:

VARIA=$(head -$((${RANDOM} % $(wc -l < file) + 1)) file | tail -1)

Related Solutions

Bash Arrays – Using Variables in Array Names

Some ideas:

A "parameter expansion" of a variable value (the ${...} part):
```
echo "arr$COUNTER[0] = ${arr$COUNTER[0]}"
```
will not work. You may get around by using eval (but I do not recommend it):
```
eval echo "arr$COUNTER[0] = \${arr$COUNTER[0]}"
```
That line could be written as this:
```
i="arr$COUNTER[0]"; echo "$i = ${!i}"
```
That is called indirection (the !) in Bash.
A similar issue happens with this line:
```
declare -a "arr$COUNTER=($field)"
```
Which should be split into two lines, and eval used:
```
declare -a "arr$COUNTER"
eval arr$COUNTER\=$ \$field $
```
Again, I do not recommend using eval (in this case).
As you are reading the whole file into the memory of the shell, we may as well use a simpler method to get all lines into an array:
```
readarray -t lines <"VALUES_FILE.txt"
```
That should be faster than calling awk for each line.

An script with all the above could be:

#!/bin/bash
valfile="VALUES_FILE.txt"

readarray -t lines <"$valfile"             ### read all lines in.

line_count="${#lines[@]}"
echo "Total number of lines $line_count"

for ((l=0;l<$line_count;l++)); do
    echo "Counter value is $l"             ### In which line are we?
    echo "Field = ${lines[l]}"             ### kepth only to help understanding.
    k="arr$l"                              ### Build the variable arr$COUNTER
    IFS=" " read -ra $k <<<"${lines[l]}"   ### Split into an array a line.
    eval max=\${#$k[@]}                    ### How many elements arr$COUNTER has?
    #echo "field $field and k=$k max=$max" ### Un-quote to "see" inside.
    for ((j=0;j<$max;j++)); do             ### for each element in the line.
        i="$k[$j]"; echo "$i = ${!i}"      ### echo it's value.
    done
done
echo "The End"
echo

However, still, AWK may be faster, if we could execute what you need in AWK.

A similar processing could be done in awk. Assuming the 6 values will be used as an IP (4 of them) and the other two are a number and an epoch time.

Just a very simple sample of an AWK script:

#!/bin/sh
valfile="VALUES_FILE.txt"
awk '
NF==6 { printf ( "IP: %s.%s.%s.%s\t",$1,$2,$3,$4)
        printf ( "number: %s\t",$5+2)
        printf ( "epoch: %s\t",$6)
        printf ( "\n" )
    }
' "$valfile"

Just make a new question with the details.

Bash – unexpected EOF while looking for matching `)’

Is your script indented like that? the delimiter for the here-doc has to be at the beginning of the line. This works for me:

#!/bin/bash
echo $(cat <<EOF
blah
EOF
)

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Bash Arrays – Using Variables in Array Names

Bash – unexpected EOF while looking for matching `)’

Related Question