Shell Script - Running a script assigned to a variable returns "command not found"

Question

I have a script as follows:

var1=some_val1
var2=some_val2
var3=some_val3

varX=another_script.sh ${var1} ${var2} ${var3}

I get the following error:

./script.sh: line 5: some_val1: command not found

How do I get it to run properly? The script basically takes these parameters and runs a Hive query. If I put the Hive query back instead of another_script.sh blah blah blah, it works perfectly and the variable captures the value for use later on in the script just fine. I tried swapping it to make it more abstract and I am running into this issue. Please help. Thanks!

The shell is interpreting your line as being in the form of a=b command arg1 arg2, which runs command with the environment variable a set to value b. Thus, you're setting environment variable varX to the value another_script.sh while running the command named by var1 (presuming that expands to exactly one word, which isn't guaranteed unless you fix your quoting). — Charles Duffy
– Charles Duffy, Commented Jan 15, 2015 at 22:50
@CharlesDuffy: +1 for explaining why this is happening. Thank you! :) — CodingInCircles
– CodingInCircles, Commented Jan 15, 2015 at 22:52
...now, it might be even better to track your arguments via a single array rather than a series of almost-identically-named variables, ie. vars=( some_val1 some_val2 some_val3 ); another_script.sh "${vars[@]}", but that's a different discussion. — Charles Duffy
– Charles Duffy, Commented Jan 15, 2015 at 22:56
(also, using a .sh extension is somewhat frowned on -- if you rewrote another_script in, say, Python or Ruby, you'd need to either change every caller to use the new extension or have it be named inaccurately -- and by convention, UNIX commands don't have extensions anyhow; you don't run ls.elf, after all, you just run ls. More haranguing on that topic at talisman.org/~erlkonig/documents/…). — Charles Duffy
– Charles Duffy, Commented Jan 15, 2015 at 22:59
Well, you wouldn't put a .sh in the command name -- you'd call it as another_script, not another_script.sh, but yes, it would work just as well. It's the #!/bin/sh or #!/bin/bash line that tells the operating system to treat it as a shell script (and which kind of shell script to treat it as -- the former is pure POSIX, the latter is bash, and others exist as well); the .sh extension has no functional effect at all. — Charles Duffy
– Charles Duffy, Commented Jan 15, 2015 at 23:17

Cyrus · Accepted Answer · 2015-01-15 22:47:43Z

2

Replace

varX=another_script.sh ${var1} ${var2} ${var3}

by

varX=$(another_script.sh ${var1} ${var2} ${var3})

answered Jan 15, 2015 at 22:47

Cyrus

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1 Comment

CodingInCircles Over a year ago

Thanks! I'll try that and let you know. Thank you :) Edit: Worked like a charm! I have other errors now, but at least, not this one! :D

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