Hi all,

I am new to this forum. I am sorry if this is not correct place to post this.

I was trying to run small shell script, but could not run. I got the error like in subject. Can any one help me to figure this problem.

This is exact way i was trying to do.

[mycom7] # ./ctopo.sh um_test1 [(1,2),(2,1)]
bash: syntax error near unexpected token `('

ctopo.sh script takes two strings as input, here first one is um_test1 and second one is [(1,2),(2,1)]. Then it passes to the python script it takes two strings.

#!/bin/bash

slice=$1
links=$2
exec `/usr/bin/plcsh /root/gra2.py $slice $links`


Thank you
--Ram

Paratheses are, amongst others, shell meta-characters with special meaning to the shell. If you want to pass them as-is to a script or executable, you have to tell the shell to ignore them when evaluating your command by escaping or quoting them. In your case, the best way is to double-quote the whole second parameter.

Might it also work to quote the variables in the shell script, like this?

--Dane

No. The shell interprets the command you are typing, ( and ) are characters with a special meaning for the shell, so you MUST hide them by quoting or by escaping.

Another piece of advice when writing a script is to test and ask yourself, how would this work on the command line?

So to take your script, ask yourself if the following would work:
Then test it on the command line to confirm.

Thank you very much for all your replies. Currently i can not reach my server(remote one, on which i am trying to integrate my application ) to test these solutions, i guess there is a network issue.

I will get back to you soon.

Hi Grail. Thank you for your advice. I will definitely mark it as solved, if these solutions work.

Thank you all. It is solved with double quote the second parameter like..

[mycom7] # ./ctopo.sh um_test1 "[(1,2),(2,1)]"