nmcli con up command seems to add a trailing period when giving it a connection name from a variable

Question

I have a bash script that places the gsm modem connection name in a variable:

name=$(nmcli -f NAME, TYPE c | grep gsm | grep -oP '.*(?=gsm)')

echo $name gives me "Provider connection".

However, when I use $name to bring the interface up I get the following:

nmcli -t con up id "$name"

results in "Error: Unknown connection: Provider connection .".

I've tried using ${name} as well and to try and find where the period is coming from I used "($name)" which results in "Error: Unknown connection: (Provider connection )." Also tried writing the connection name to a file an then reading that into a variable but no luck there.

Anybody know where that trailing period/dot comes from?

When you wrote the variable to file, what was actually written in the file? — asimovwasright, Nov 12 '15 at 11:06
I believe there's no trailing dot (the dot in the error message is probably a full stop to end the sentence), but rather, trailing spaces. — 4ae1e1, Nov 12 '15 at 11:07
The variable written to file was "Provider connection" without the dot. — Andre, Nov 12 '15 at 12:40
Thanks for your effort - I tried the solution below which yields only the dot. "Error: Unknown connection: ." — Andre, Nov 12 '15 at 12:41
Please could you show in bash the output of `echo "$name"` Only the output as it comes exactly, add no quotations. — asimovwasright, Nov 12 '15 at 12:44

asimovwasright · Accepted Answer · 2015-11-12T12:53:23.440

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EDIT:

Ok, I'll call it. I think this is a whitespace issue, not a trailing period.

In this case, you should preprocess the variable before using it:

name="$(echo -e "${name}" | sed -e 's/[[:space:]]*$//')"

nmcli -t con up id "$name"

This will remove only trailing white space, without affecting the actual string.

I hope this helps ;-)

edited Nov 12 '15 at 12:53

answered Nov 12 '15 at 11:57

asimovwasright

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http://stackoverflow.com/questions/369758/how-to-trim-whitespace-from-a-bash-variable – asimovwasright Nov 12 '15 at 12:04
Still get the following: Error: Unknown connection: . – Andre Nov 12 '15 at 12:54
what if you run the command `nmcli -t con up id Provider connection` – asimovwasright Nov 12 '15 at 13:00
Seems like a malformed command to begin with, but I have no experience with nmcli – asimovwasright Nov 12 '15 at 13:00
That does work nmcli -t con up id "Provider connection" ...it's only a problem when I run nmcli with the variable – Andre Nov 12 '15 at 13:01
can you follow the same command steps in my screen shot - I want to see if there is a Bash or sed variance at play. – asimovwasright Nov 12 '15 at 13:02
name="$(echo -e "${name}" | sed -e 's/[[:space:]]*$//')" This command takes me to the > prompt – Andre Nov 12 '15 at 13:09
Found a solution: Whitespace was definitly the issue so I used your advice and piped my command output to sed. name=$(nmcli -f NAME, TYPE c | grep gsm | grep -oP '.*(?=gsm)' | sed -e 's/[[:space:]]*$//')" – Andre Nov 12 '15 at 13:17

score -1 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 12 '15 at 13:25

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Whitespace removal solved this issue. Removed with sed.

name=$(nmcli -f NAME, TYPE c | grep gsm | grep -oP '.(?=gsm)' | sed -e 's/[[:space:]]$//')"

answered Nov 12 '15 at 13:25

Andre

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nmcli con up command seems to add a trailing period when giving it a connection name from a variable

2 Answers2