I've noticed that bash sometimes reports scripting errors where there are none. I've got a complicated script, and I'm sure that it has no errors anymore. Or at least not the same errors it's reporting. What I can't garuntee, is that somewhere in the file structure itself, there are not errors. But in any case, I've seen it come and go with the same contents, so I know that as long as I didn't accidently change it in a bad way, there are no errors.

It does effect the system however. It makes the files malfunction horribly. Does anybody know why bash does this and how to tell it it has no errors? I'm using SuSE Linux 9.0.

Hi.

If bash is telling you there's errors, then there's errors. Bash should know, since it's the interpreter.

You might gain some insight by changing the first line of the script from '#!/bin/bash' to '#!/bin/bash -x'. That will print each line as it runs.

Dave

Thanks! I'll try that!

Also make sure to quote the variables everytime is possible (be prepared for white spaces), and to enclose them in curly braces (a non-enclosed variable may confuse bash even when there are no strong reasons for this). But yes, if bash reports errors, there are errors.