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Full Discussion: `do' unexpected -> Error message
Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting `do' unexpected -> Error message Post 302943072 by bakunin on Tuesday 5th of May 2015 07:42:11 AM
Old 05-05-2015
Quote:
Originally Posted by gsiva
Am I missing something ???
As it is: yes. You have been given ample help already on how to construct the for-loop syntactically correct. IMHO this is one side of the story. My advice is to avoid for-loops for things like yours altogether and use while-loops instead:

instead of

Code:
for VAR in $(command -producing | some | list) ; do
     something $VAR
done

do

Code:
command -producing | some | list |\
while read VAR ; do
     something $VAR
done

There are two reasons for this:

first, "for" parses words, not lines. If one of the list of items the command produces contains a whitespace it will break. The "while read ..." will parse on lines and as long as on each line is only one value you are fine even if the values themselves contain whitespace.

second, there is a maximum line length and a maximum number of arguments a command can take in place. These values have been increased with the advent of 64-bit OSes but they are still there and whatever you feed into "for" is an argument to it. For instance:

Code:
 for i in 1 2 3 4 5 ; do .... done

gives 5 arguments, "1", "2", etc., to "for". Because your process substitution ("$(...)" or backticks) can produce any number of arguments without you having control over the process. It may never really hit you but why the take the risk? The while-loop will have no restriction in the number of elements it can process because it handles one item at a time.

I hope this helps.

bakunin
 

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LEARN ABOUT V7

break

break(1)                                                           User Commands                                                          break(1)

NAME

       break, continue - shell built-in functions to escape from or advance within a controlling while, for, foreach, or until  loop

SYNOPSIS

   sh
       break [n]

       continue [n]

   csh
       break

       continue

   ksh
       *break [n]

       *continue [n]

DESCRIPTION

   sh
       The break utility exits from the enclosing for or while loop, if any. If n is specified, break n levels.

       The continue utility resumes the next iteration of the enclosing for or while loop. If n is specified, resume at the n-th enclosing loop.

   csh
       The  break  utility  resumes  execution after the end of the nearest enclosing foreach or while loop. The remaining commands on the current
       line are executed. This allows multilevel breaks to be written as a list of break commands, all on one line.

       The continue utility continues execution of the next iteration of the nearest enclosing while or foreach loop.

   ksh
       The break utility exits from the enclosed for, while, until, or select loop, if any. If n is specified,  then  break  n  levels.  If  n  is
       greater than the number of enclosing loops, the outermost enclosing loop shall be exited.

       The  continue utility resumes the next iteration of the enclosed for, while, until, or select loop. If n is specified then resume at the n-
       th enclosed loop. If n is greater than the number of enclosing loops, the outermost enclosing loop shall be used.

       On this man page, ksh(1) commands that are preceded by one or two * (asterisks) are treated specially in the following ways:

       1.  Variable assignment lists preceding the command remain in effect when the command completes.

       2.  I/O redirections are processed after variable assignments.

       3.  Errors cause a script that contains them to abort.

       4.  Words that follow a command preceded by ** that are in the format of a variable assignment are expanded with the same rules as a  vari-
           able  assignment.  This means that tilde substitution is performed after the = sign, and also that word splitting and file name genera-
           tion are not performed.

ATTRIBUTES

       See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |      ATTRIBUTE TYPE         |      ATTRIBUTE VALUE        |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Availability                 |SUNWcsu                      |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+

SEE ALSO

       csh(1), exit(1), ksh(1), sh( 1), attributes(5)

SunOS 5.10                                                          17 Jul 2002                                                           break(1)
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