Shell – bash: syntax error near unexpected token `(‘

shell-script

I am trying to concatenate some files side by side.

I use the pr command in the terminal. It works well, but when I use it in a shell script, I get the following error message:

syntax error near unexpected token `('

Here is the script:

#!/bin/sh
myfile1=toto1.dat
myfile1=toto2.dat
file_out=mytoto_out.dat
touch ${file_out}
/usr/bin/pr -mts' ' <( /usr/bin/cut -d' ' -s -f1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11 ${myfile1}) <( /usr/bin/cut -d' ' -s -f8 $myfile2) >>${file_out}
echo ${file_out} " is done"

Best Answer

On the command line, your shell is bash. In your script you're using /bin/sh. /bin/sh apparently is not bash on your system, and the <() syntax is apparently not present in whatever shell /bin/sh is.

Change the shebang (the #!/bin/sh part) to #!/bin/bash.

Related Solutions

Bash – Syntax error near unexpected token `done’

Either the do should appear on a new line, or it needs to have a semi-colon inserted in front of it
<FIRST-LAST> should actually be the name of a shell variable, and FIRST-LAST should be a reference to that variable. < and > are not legal characters for shell variables, so we can deduce that something else must be substituted here instead. person seems to be as good a variable name as any in this particular case.

I think something like this should work much better:

while read person ; do
        echo "${person}"
        curl -O "https://www.uoguelph.ca/arts/history/people/${person}"
done < formatted_history.txt

This assumes that the file formatted_history.txt actually exists in the current directory and is a list of people from the https://www.uoguelph.ca/arts/history/people/ page - something like:

tara-abraham
donna-andrew
susan-armstrong-reid
... etc ...

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Bash – Syntax error near unexpected token `done’

Related Question