Bash/Osascript Error: unexpected EOF while looking for matching `)'

Question

I'm splitting a string using osascript (was working this way, not with bash), and assigning the resulting array to a bash variable, and continuing with my bash script. I'm doing it like so:

tempArrayApplications=$(osascript >/dev/null <<EOF
    set oldDelimiters to AppleScript's text item delimiters
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to "/"
    set theArray to every text item of "$noSplitString"
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to oldDelimiters
    return theArray
EOF)

However, the command line returns the error that it went to the end of the file without finding the matching ')'. However, when I don't assign a bash variable to the osascript output, everything works fine, so I know it's not a problem with the AppleScript section. I ran shellcheck, and it doesn't detect any errors, and the other solutions seem to be related to an unclosed quote or unescaped character, but I don't seem to have that problem. Clearly it's due to trying to assign it to a bash variable, but for the life of me I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Thanks for the help.

You have to put the closing `)` on a separate line, or the `EOF` marker is not recognized. — Benjamin W., Jul 26 '18 at 15:22
Almost a duplicate (was with whitespace after the `EOF` marker): https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18660798/here-document-gives-unexpected-end-of-file-error — Benjamin W., Jul 26 '18 at 15:24
Also, shellcheck tells me "Add a linefeed between end token and terminating ')'.": https://github.com/koalaman/shellcheck/wiki/SC1119 — Benjamin W., Jul 26 '18 at 15:28
No trailing blanks, my text editor (Sublime Text) catches that. @BenjaminW. — javarookie, Jul 26 '18 at 15:47
Then I don't know. Putting the `)` on a separate line makes the whole thing work for me, in both bash and sh. Do you insert carriage returns at line ends? — Benjamin W., Jul 26 '18 at 15:50
Huh, that's weird it works for me but not for you. And no, I don't insert carraige returns at line ends. @BenjaminW. — javarookie, Jul 26 '18 at 15:56
Sorry bad wording, works for you, not for me. And yes this is in a script. @BenjaminW. — javarookie, Jul 26 '18 at 16:03
The shebang is #!/bin/bash. I run it in terminal just by dragging the executable file path to the command line. — javarookie, Jul 26 '18 at 16:08
Oh, I get an error when using Bash 3.2 instead of Bash 4.4. Is the error you get when moving the parens to a separate line this one? `unexpected EOF while looking for matching \`''` — Benjamin W., Jul 26 '18 at 17:32
That would be this problem: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25891644/heredoc-within-command-substitution-error-when-quotes-or-parentheses-are-unbala — Benjamin W., Jul 26 '18 at 17:32
And a solution to it would be to get a more recent Bash from, for example, Homebrew (https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/bash). — Benjamin W., Jul 26 '18 at 17:34
Yeah the error is what i stated in the title of the question, very similar to what you got. I'll update my bash and report back if that works. — javarookie, Jul 26 '18 at 17:42
But when you put the `)` on a separate line, does it still complain about "looking for matching `)`", or is it about "matching `'`"? — Benjamin W., Jul 26 '18 at 17:44
UPDATE: Just upgraded bash, no longer get the error! However, the array isn't being passed to the bash variable. I log theArray and i see everything, but when I log tempArrayApplications it's empty — javarookie, Jul 26 '18 at 18:32
You're not creating an array anyway, just a string. To read multiple lines into an array, have a look at `readarray`/`mapfile` (Bash 4.0 or newer). — Benjamin W., Jul 26 '18 at 18:34
Well, and it's empty because you throw away your output with `> /dev/null`. — Benjamin W., Jul 26 '18 at 18:35
Appears you're right. Got rid of the `/dev/null` statement and I can see the "array", but you're right, it's not really an array. I'll take a look at `readarray/mapfile` — javarookie, Jul 26 '18 at 19:13

CJK · Accepted Answer · 2018-07-26T21:55:00.913

Have you paused to consider that you're taking a bash variable ($noSplitString); inserting this into an AppleScript that splits the text using / as the delimiter; executing this AppleScript inside a bash command (osascript); then storing its output (which actually gets destroyed) in another bash variable ($tempArrayApplications)...?

My inclination would be to remove the AppleScript altogether (3 out of its 5 lines are redundant, anyway), and create the array from the string within bash.

So, given this:

noSplitString="item 1/item 2/item 3"

Then simply do this:

IFS='/'
tempArrayApplications=($noSplitString)

Now $tempArrayApplications will be an array with three items, starting at index 0 and ending at index 2. You can echo a specific element in the array like this:

echo "${tempArrayApplications[1]}" # "item 2"

IFS is the bash equivalent of the AppleScript text item delimiters. It typically has a default value of ⎵\t\n (where ⎵ indicates a space character). More can be read about it in this article: Bash IFS: its Definition, Viewing it and Modifying it

Will accept this as the answer. I'm more familiar with Applescript, so when I can fall back to it I tend to do so, didn't realize it was this simple in bash though. — javarookie, Jul 27 '18 at 16:33

Bash/Osascript Error: unexpected EOF while looking for matching `)'

1 Answers1