Unexpected syntax error in read loop

Question

I'm not sure what I'm missing here. I've got the following read loop in my program:

while true
do
    read -p "Would you like to enter an end date (y/n) (if no, end date will default to today) " answer

    case $answer in
    [yY]* ) while true
            do
                read -p "Please enter an end date in yyyymmdd format: " answer

                echo Running script from dates  $startDate  to  $answer
                ruby $DIR/dinersDataAutomation.rb -s $startDate -e $answer
                break
            done
            break

    [nN]* ) echo Running script with a start date of  $startDate
            ruby $DIR/dinersDataAutomation.rb -s $startDate
            break

    * )     echo "Please enter Y or N"
    esac
done

This produces the following error:

./getDinersInfo.sh: line 56: syntax error near unexpected token `)'
./getDinersInfo.sh: line 56: `      [nN]* ) echo Running script with a start date of  $startDate'

For the life of me I can't figure out what the error could be. $startDate gets defined in a previous read loop, so I know it's not the fact that $startDate isn't defined.

I'd appreciate a second set of eyes to let me know what I'm missing on these lines.

chepner · Accepted Answer · 2016-05-11 12:32:57Z

1

You didn't terminate the previous block with a double semicolon.

case $answer in
    [yY]* ) while true
            do
                read -p "Please enter an end date in yyyymmdd format: " answer

                echo Running script from dates  $startDate  to  $answer
                ruby $DIR/dinersDataAutomation.rb -s $startDate -e $answer
                break
            done
            break
            ;;

    [nN]* ) echo Running script with a start date of  $startDate
            ruby $DIR/dinersDataAutomation.rb -s $startDate
            break
            ;;

    * )     echo "Please enter Y or N"
            ;;
esac

edited May 11, 2016 at 12:32

answered May 10, 2016 at 15:30

chepner

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4 Comments

rici Over a year ago

Also, what is the point of while true; do ...; break; done? ... would have the same effect with a lot less noise.

chepner Over a year ago

I debated whether or not to address that; it's probably a semantic error (not testing the value of answer before breaking out of the loop), but it's not a syntax error.

rici Over a year ago

Possibly, but you removed the break statements from the outer while loop, which makes it infinite instead of repeating only in the *) case. (Those break statements were not (just) to break out of case.) When I first looked at the Q, I thought that OP believed that you could only use read in a while loop, but now I'm tending towards thinking that it's a slightly warped style.

chepner Over a year ago

Ah, right, I didn't pay enough attention to the outer loop.

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