I'm trying to run a bash script on my Ubuntu machine and it is giving me an error:
function not found
To test, I created the following script which works fine on my laptop but not on my Desktop. Any ideas as to why? My laptop is a mac if that's relevant.
#!/bin/bash
function sayIt {
echo "hello world"
}
sayIt
This returns "hello world" on my laptop, but on my Desktop it returns:
run.sh: 3: function not found hello world run.sh: 5: Syntax error: "}" unexpected
Chances are that on your desktop you are not actually running under bash but rather dash or some other POSIX-compliant shell that does not recognize the function keyword. The function keyword is a bashism, a bash extension. POSIX syntax does not use function and mandates the use of parenthesis.
$ more a.sh
#!/bin/sh
function sayIt {
echo "hello world"
}
sayIt
$ bash a.sh
hello world
$ dash a.sh
a.sh: 3: function: not found
hello world
a.sh: 5: Syntax error: "}" unexpected
The POSIX-syntax works in both:
$ more b.sh
#!/bin/sh
sayIt () {
echo "hello world"
}
sayIt
$ bash b.sh
hello world
$ dash b.sh
hello world
function comes from the korn shell, which pre-dates bash.
I faced the same problem, I then modified the syntax and it worked for me. Try to remove the keyword function and add brackets () after the function name.
#!/bin/bash
sayIt()
{
echo "hello world"
}
sayIt
function name { ... } is used for e.g. /bin/bash. So the OP is probably using the wrong interpreter (She-Bang line says it should be bash, but that line is ignored if you explicitly start the script using sh ...)ls -la /bin/sh
check the sym link where it point to bash or dash
For me, I just edited the bash profile and forgot to restart my terminal session.
Doesn't it require () after function name, or at the call?
function sayIt() { ...
}
sayIt()
? :)
Hmm, actually, on MY mac, it works just as you pasted..
dtpwmbp:~ pwadas$ cat aa.sh
#!/bin/bash
function sayIt() {
echo "hello world"
}
sayIt
dtpwmbp:~ pwadas$ ./aa.sh
hello world
dtpwmbp:~ pwadas$
Compare bash version, AFAIR some older version required "()"s.
dtpwmbp:~ pwadas$ bash --version
GNU bash, version 3.2.48(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin12)
Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
dtpwmbp:~ pwadas$
Also compare state of shopt options ( man bash ), on both shells, maybe one of them have some compat syntax turned on or off ? "shopt" command without args will list state of options supported.
() in the function definition but not when calling the function.
function foo() { is actually more invalid than function foo {. The function foo { syntax is supported on old versions of ksh, and modern shells that try to maintain compatibility with them, but not required to be supported by shells compliant with the 1992 POSIX sh standard. By contrast, foo() { is valid on all POSIX-compliant shells. function foo() { is a hybrid of the two formats, and less widely supported than either on its own. See wiki.bash-hackers.org/scripting/obsolete