Problem with heredoc inside case. Bash script [duplicate]

Question

If in my terminal I write

cat <<-EOF
hello
EOF

I get the expected output, hello.

Now, In a script I'm writing I have

PARAMS=""
while (( "$#" )); do
  case "$1" in
    -h|--help)
      cat <<-EOF
      hello
      EOF
      exit 0  
      ;;
    --) # end argument parsing
      shift
      ...

But vscode is highlighting everything after the line cat<<-EOF as if it all was a string, basically ignoring the EOF. And in fact when I run the script I get a

syntax error: unexpected end of file

error

Edit:

if I indent the code like this:

while (( "$#" )); do
  case "$1" in
    -h|--help)
      cat <<EOF
      ciao
EOF
      exit 0  
      ;;
    --) # end argument parsing
      shift
      ...

with EOF on the left, vscode recognises it as it should, hilighting the rest of the file as a normal bash script and everithing works. But indentation-wise this sucks. Is there a way to indent EOF with the cat command?

with tab in front of EOF there's still the problem. It only works when EOF is at the beginning of the line like @stark says. — ninazzo
– ninazzo, Commented Apr 19, 2020 at 17:03
Make sure you have put a tab, from doc If the redirection operator is <<-, then all leading tab characters are stripped from in- put lines and the line containing delimiter. This allows here-documents within shell scripts to be indented in a natural fashion. I just tested your code, it works with a tab. — Philippe
– Philippe, Commented Apr 19, 2020 at 17:05

Abelisto · Accepted Answer · 2020-04-19 17:39:06Z

6

You could to use spaces before EOF in here-doc like this:

    cat <<"    EOF"
        foo
        bar
    EOF

But to avoid formatting/indentation issues I prefer to use functions for that:

print_help() {
cat <<EOF
    foo
    bar
EOF
}
...
PARAMS=""
while (( "$#" )); do
  case "$1" in
    -h|--help)
      print_help
      exit 0  
      ;;
    --) # end argument parsing
      shift
      ...

It also makes code cleaner.

edited Apr 19, 2020 at 17:39

answered Apr 19, 2020 at 17:30

Abelisto

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Comments

Richard Jessop · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-01 15:12:33Z

0

The -EOF has to be at the beginning of the line. I've made that mistake several times when I prettyprint a script and inadvertently indent the heredoc terminator.

edited Jun 1, 2020 at 15:12

answered Apr 19, 2020 at 17:13

Richard Jessop

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2 Comments

LukeSavefrogs Over a year ago

Cannot create a new answer, so i'm adding this comment. This is not the problem here... he used <<-EOF in which the dash means that you CAN indent the heredoc terminator... The actual problem is that you must use TABS when indenting the terminator (as you can see here and as said by @Philippe) and probably @ninazzo used spaces. Another thing is that the terminator CANNOT be followed by any character or it will break

Richard Jessop Over a year ago

Note: the original problem statement has a - in front of the EOF. Later in the problem statement, the - is omitted. The answer still stands that the terminator must occur at the beginning of the line (and with nothing else following it). Indiscriminant prettyprinting of bash scripts is not a general safe practice.

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