Problem with heredoc inside case. Bash script

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, Apr 19 '20 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, Apr 19 '20 at 17:05

Abelisto · Answer 1 · 2020-04-19T17:39:06.007

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.

Richard Jessop · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-01T15:12:33.447

2

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 01 '20 at 15:12

answered Apr 19 '20 at 17:13

Richard Jessop

897
1
12
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2

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](https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/76483/348102) 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 – LukeSavefrogs Jun 01 '20 at 07:19
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. – Richard Jessop Jun 01 '20 at 15:18

Problem with heredoc inside case. Bash script

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