Re: Syntax error in Confirm

On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 11:24:39AM -0400, Jo for lists and groups wrote:
> Good day all!
> We are getting an error in the logs:
> 
> ../.bin/extraddr: subscription request from [email protected]
> [email protected] - assigned cookie s03261058491490
> sed: -e expression #1, char 4: Unexpected ','
> 
> 
> 
> Would this refer to the comma in the maxcookies line near the bottom of
> confirm_add? How to fix? 
> 
>   $cat $confirmtxt
>   $echo ""
> 
>   $rm -f _dummy_ `$ls -td cookies/* | $sed -e '1,'$maxcookies' d' `
> 
>   $sed -e 's/^/>/' $tmprequest
> ) | $SENDMAIL $sendmailOPT $authaddr
> 
> 
> I don't know enough about sed (find all shell hard to grasp), but other
> programming experience tells me the two sets of ' are ambiguous or
> confusing. Is this what was meant - a delet range 1-to-maxcookies - okay to
> drop the inner quotes? 
> 
>       $sed -e '1,$maxcookies d'

No, that would leave the literal string '$maxcookies' in the sed command.
The original form allows the shell to expand the variable, and at the same
time remove the single quotes, so that sed sees a single string, the 
concatenation of '1,', the value of $maxcookies, and ' d'.

If maxcookies is not set then sed would see '1, d', which gives the
error you're seeing, e.g.:

    $ ls | sed '1, d'
    sed: -e expression #1, char 4: unexpected `,'

Ken

> 
> 
> Many thanks in advance for any assistance.
> Jo