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shellcygwinnewline

How to fix Cygwin error on angle brackets < > in a shell script?

I'm trying to get a shell script running in Cygwin and in the cut down section I posted below it crashes out with an error that reads:

new.sh: line 8: syntax error near unexpected token `newline'

#!/bin/sh
set -eu

usage(){
    echo "$(cat <<"EOF")"
      sh new.sh <--repo REPO>+

    --repo | -r <REPO_URL>
      url of a repository to analyze
      REQUIRES --repo OR --repo-file

    --save-credentials | -s
      save credentials (in plain text) after running

    --help | -h
      shows this message

    EOF
}

There are no carriage returns causing this error message. It seems its as a result of the angle brackets < and >. After removing them, it later falls over on the ( and ) brackets.

Is this a code issue or a Cygwin issue? Can somebody suggest a fix?

Solution

  • Why echo "$(cat <<"EOF")"? Simplify: cat <<'EOF'

    Also, the terminating EOF cannot have preceding whitespace, unless you use <<- and there are strictly tab characters to indent. http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bashref.html#Here-Documents