Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi i am new here and have a quick question.

i am receiving ./project.sh: line 12: syntax error near unexpected token `newline'
./project.sh: line 12: `echo "`date +"%F %R"` `md5sum /etc/passwd`" >> '

error message
here is my script. could you please help!

#!/bin/bash
# PROGRAM: project.sh
# OBJECTIVE: Log changes
# AUTHOR:
# DATE: May 2009
#
MYDIR=$HOME/bin
MYLOGDIR=$MYDIR/logs
#
echo "`date +"%F %R"` `wc /etc/passwd`" >> $MYLOGDIR/checkpasswd_wc.txt
#
echo "`date +"%F %R"` `md5sum /etc/passwd`" >> $MYLOGDIR/checkpasswd_md5.txt
#
echo " " >> $MYLOGDIR/passwd_file.txt
echo `date +"%F %R"` >> $MYLOGDIR/passwd_file.txt
more /etc/passwd >> $MYLOGDIR/passwd_file.txt
echo " " >> $MYLOGDIR/passwd_file.txt
echo " " >> $MYLOGDIR/passwd_file.txt
#
echo "`date +"%F %R"` `df -v |grep /home2`" >> $MYLOGDIR/check_ds.txt
#
echo " " >> $MYLOGDIR/checkds_all.txt
echo "`date +"%F %R"`" >> $MYLOGDIR/checkds_all.txt
df -v >> $MYLOGDIR/checkds_all.txt
echo " " >> $MYLOGDIR/checkds_all.txt
echo " " >> $MYLOGDIR/checkds_all.txt
#
#

I can't see why cron is objecting but I would capture the date in a variable and then use the string where the script is currently calling date(1) to make the lines less complicated and only call date(1) once, e.g.:

Code:

DATESTR=`date +"%F %R"`
#
echo "${DATESTR} `wc /etc/passwd`" >> $MYLOGDIR/checkpasswd_wc.txt
#
echo "${DATESTR} `md5sum /etc/passwd`" >> $MYLOGDIR/checkpasswd_md5.txt

This also avoids nested speech marks which can cause grief.

HTH

that worked thanks. just made a variable for the date and switched it out and it worked. Thanks for the help!

Even though am not able to find out how you are calling this bash script.

I could able to realize that, when you use the % in the crontab it will be taken as newline, you can find more info by googling as percentage + cron - Google Search...

from a comment in Andrew Beacock's Blog: Having cron troubles with percent (%) signs in crontabs?

Code:

Percent-signs (%) in the command, unless escaped with backslash (\), will be changed into newline characters, and all data after the first % will be sent to the command as standard input.

You can't nest double quotes. This caused the syntax error.

Code:

echo "`date +'%F %R'` `wc /etc/passwd`" >>$MYLOGDIR/checkpasswd_wc.txt