#NL assoc array key assignment throwing syntax error

[knksmith57]

Cloning the repo and running $ bash sample_head.sh --help produces the following output, including a syntax error:

$ bash sample_head.sh --help
optparse.bash: line 140: #NL: syntax error: operand expected (error token is "#NL")
sample_head.sh: line 11: source: filename argument required
source: usage: source filename [arguments]
ERROR: Please provide a file

Looks like this associative array assignment is throwing the error:

local -A o=( ['#NL']='\n' ['#TB']='\t' )

Running the following BASH version:

$ bash --version
GNU bash, version 3.2.51(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin13)
Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Any idea how to fix this? My bash foo is pretty weak.

I see the use of #NL and #TB as placeholders for newlines and tabs (respectively), which are replaced on the lines following that assignment. It looks like the use of # as a special character is the reason for the ['#NL'] syntax in the array declaration. Not really sure how that works or how to debug this.

[improved-broccoli]

Same bug here. The bash script using optparse works perfectly on Linux, but it throws this error on OSX.

[improved-broccoli]

Well, I investigate and there are two issues actually.

First one, on OSX Mavericks, the bash version is 3.7 (released in 2007!). That's very old!
Associative array's are supported since Bash 4+.
So I advise you to update your bash by following this guide

Second problem, sed doesn't behaves the same way on Mavericks and on Linux. Maybe a problem of version. That causes #NL to be replaced by n instead of newline. It exists solution like describe in this thread on SO.
But it seems to do not work for #TB.
Anyway, I fixed the bug by replacing sed with perl.
The line which replaces #NL and #TB become:
perl -i -pe "s/${i}/${o[$i]}/g" $build_file
Generally, I think perl is more suitable to this kind of job. sed is good for simple inline regex, but it doesn't support complex regex and multiline mode.
BTW, I do not think using perl makes the script less portable. AFAIK, it is built-in Mavericks (and probably in Yosemite). I do not know about Linux distros, but it is not a big deal to install it.

@nk412 It needs still testing on Linux but I may issue a pull-request if you want. Just let me know.

[bitsofinfo]

+1

osx 10.12

I did this: brew install gnu-sed --with-default-names

git cloned this project today

LAPTOP $ echo $BASH_VERSION
4.4.5(1)-release
LAPTOP $ ./run-app2.sh
optparse.bash: line 162: #NL: syntax error: operand expected (error token is "#NL")
./run-app2.sh: line 20: source: filename argument required
source: usage: source filename [arguments]

[bitsofinfo]

@jbenoit2011 can you please submit a PR or explain exactly where this code goes in your fix?

[bitsofinfo]

@nk412 can this be fixed or worked around so that it works on linux and osx?

[bitsofinfo]

For anyone else this seems to simplify it tremendously

         sed -i "s/#NL/\n/g" $build_file
         sed -i "s/#TB/\t/g" $build_file