Shell Programming and Scripting

The output you're seeing is what one would see if the pipe symbol were to be quoted.

Code:

grep -n '^PAX_PAYLOAD:$' $0 '|' cut -d ':' -f 1

Seeing the entire script and knowing exactly how it's invoked (especially the value of $0) would be helpful. Also, further details of the environment may help. Which sh exactly is being used, for starters.

A shot in the dark (although I don't see how it could be the cause, it's good practice): try double-quoting $0.

Regards,
Alister

---------- Post updated at 12:54 PM ---------- Previous update was at 12:40 PM ----------

Some light may be shed on the problem if you enable tracing at the top of the script (or at least before the problematic section is entered). set -x enables tracing, set +x disables it.

Regards,
Alister

Thanks alister. Turning tracing on was a great idea.

I was able to get around my previous issue by finding an alternative to piping. However, I have another spot where I am also using a pipeline and I am seeing the same issue.

Code:

tail -n +$license_start $0 | head -n $length | uudecode -o /dev/stdout

(I am using a combination of head and tail to get encoded data between two line numbers and then piping that into uudecode. There is probably a better way to do this but for now id like to solve this piping issue.)

Alister, I took your advice and turned tracing on.
In en_US or C for the locale I get this:

Code:

+ tail -n +46382 ./install.sh
+ head -n 2217
+ uudecode -o /dev/stdout

(and then the decoded file)

In other locales like cs_CZ i get this:

Code:

+ tail -n +46382 ./install.sh | head -n 2217 | uudecode -o /dev/stdout

as if it is all one command...


I am very new to shells, encoding etc. Sorry, i do not know exactly which sh I am using.

However, I noticed that when I change the locale from cs_CZ to cs_CZ.UTF-8 piping works. Is this just an encoding problem?

This is probably just an encoding problem. Shells interpreting pipes as literal characters is extremely odd.

If this is just an encoding problem, is there a way to fix it? Is it a matter of my script not having the right encoding? I tried using file -i to determine its encoding but all I get is "regular file."

I suppose I can get around piping by storing the output of each command in a temp file, but is this good practice?

Not a good practice, no. Shells expect ASCII or something compatible with ASCII. Your encoding must be something strange which disagrees with ASCII on what | means.

Try writing up the file from scratch after you've set your encoding to "C" or UTF8 or some other ASCII-compatible encoding.

Honestly, I don't know. I have never experienced this problem. Please make sure to report back if you determine the exact cause.

Regards,
Alister

The z/OS shell expects an EBCDIC environment. The pipe is a variant character (one of 13 widely-used characters that can vary between EBCDIC flavours) which is represented by different bytes values depending on the locale which is set. This is why a pipe can work in one locale and not in another.

Internally, the z/OS shell expects the script to be encoded in IBM-1047. If the active character set is not IBM-1047, then the script is transcoded to IBM-1047 before execution. The transcode operation modifies a specific set of bytes in the script, i.e. only variant characters are changed to their IBM-1047 equivalents.

To display the variant byte values for the current locale

Code:

locale -ck LC_SYNTAX.