Why a function I am sourcing in bash not access the environment variables I have set?

Asked May 03 '22 at 15:58

Active May 03 '22 at 23:00

Viewed 200 times

I have some code that looks like this:

export AWS_REGION='us-east-1'
export CLUSTER_NAME='my_cluster'
export PROJECT_NAME='my_project'

source ./utils.sh

...additional functions...

annotate_cluster # comes from utils.sh

annotate_cluster, which comes from utils.sh, relies on the environment variable PROJECT_NAME. However, when I run it, it complains _utils.sh: line 60: FOO-${PROJECT_NAME^^}: bad substitution. Why can it not access the environment variable I have set?

asked May 03 '22 at 15:58

oddnumberedcat

1

That error would arise if bash is running in posix mode (eg, invoked as `sh`) – William Pursell May 03 '22 at 16:02
"bad substitution" doesn't mean the variable doesn't exist; it means the shell doesn't recognize the `^^` syntax. That does indeed imply that you're running `sh`, not `bash`. – Charles Duffy May 03 '22 at 16:05
It's a syntax error, not an environment issue. – chepner May 03 '22 at 16:05
1

(could also be too old a version of bash; that's a relatively recent feature, not found in bash 3.x; does one entrypoint use `#!/usr/bin/env bash` while the other one uses `#!/bin/bash`?). – Charles Duffy May 03 '22 at 16:08
But I am running it in bash? I am doing `bash ./my_file.sh` and have been this entire time... – oddnumberedcat May 03 '22 at 16:08
Add `echo "$BASH_VERSION"` to your script. What does it say? – Charles Duffy May 03 '22 at 16:09
Solved it--thanks, @CharlesDuffy. Apparently the default bash version on Mac is indeed quite old. Thanks for the pointer! – oddnumberedcat May 03 '22 at 16:45
1

_nod_. That's unfortunately deliberate -- Apple doesn't consent to be bound by the GPLv3 license that newer versions of bash are distributed under. – Charles Duffy May 03 '22 at 17:26

Why a function I am sourcing in bash not access the environment variables I have set?

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