For reference I am on Ubuntu 15.10.
When you use the source on command line have you ever encountered key=value: command not found this error? Or even in a bash script?
$ source <filename>
key=value: command not found
Most of the information on the Ubuntu website takes you in the direction of executing this command in the wrong shell. I was running a bash script with the above command throwing the above error. So according to what I found the first line of your bash script should have been #!/bin/bash and not #!/bin/sh which is exactly what I had.
I then ran the same command on the bash shell and got exactly the same error. Now that I knew this was not my shell, I had to figure out what the cause was.
Also instead of running a source <filename> you can apparently do a . <filename> and this also resulted in exactly the same error.
'source' apparently is supposed to be the long version of '.' command. On the bash prompt one can do:
$ source ~/.bashrc
or
$ . ~/.bashrc
It took me hours of debugging to finally figure out what I was doing wrong, and hence why I decided to document it hoping it might be useful to someone out there.
You need to understand what a source does before you can debug the issue. The problem with source is, its a shell built-in which means that there's no documentation available for it through man. On a terminal type the below:
$ man source
No manual entry for source
Now try the below
$ type source
source is a shell builtin
And when you try source on its own
$ source
bash: source: filename argument required
source: usage: source filename [arguments]
Right, so how do I get more information on source and what does a source actually do?
Since I was in bash, and source is a shell builtin the next thing is to do a man bash, and search for a source in the manual.
$ man bash
source filename [arguments]
Read and execute commands from filename in the current shell
environment and return the exit status of the last command exe‐
cuted from filename. If filename does not contain a slash,
filenames in PATH are used to find the directory containing
filename. The file searched for in PATH need not be executable.
When bash is not in posix mode, the current directory is
searched if no file is found in PATH. If the sourcepath option
to the shopt builtin command is turned off, the PATH is not
searched. If any arguments are supplied, they become the posi‐
tional parameters when filename is executed. Otherwise the
positional parameters are unchanged. The return status is the
status of the last command exited within the script (0 if no
commands are executed), and false if filename is not found or
cannot be read.
Or as quoted from http://superuser.com/questions/46139/what-does-source-do
"info source
BASH BUILTIN COMMANDS
Unless otherwise noted, each builtin command documented in this section
as accepting options preceded by - accepts -- to signify the end of the
options. The :, true, false, and test builtins do not accept options
and do not treat -- specially. The exit, logout, break, continue, let,
and shift builtins accept and process arguments beginning with - with-
out requiring --. Other builtins that accept arguments but are not
specified as accepting options interpret arguments beginning with - as
invalid options and require -- to prevent this interpretation.
: [arguments]
No effect; the command does nothing beyond expanding arguments
and performing any specified redirections. A zero exit code is
returned.
. filename [arguments]
source filename [arguments]
Read and execute commands from filename in the current shell
environment and return the exit status of the last command exe-
cuted from filename. If filename does not contain a slash, file
names in PATH are used to find the directory containing file-
name. The file searched for in PATH need not be executable.
When bash is not in posix mode, the current directory is
searched if no file is found in PATH. If the sourcepath option
to the shopt builtin command is turned off, the PATH is not
searched. If any arguments are supplied, they become the posi-
tional parameters when filename is executed. Otherwise the
positional parameters are unchanged. The return status is the
status of the last command exited within the script (0 if no
commands are executed), and false if filename is not found or
cannot be read."
Also quoting from stackoverflow "@robinst: Sourcing the file using . or source has the problem that you can also put commands in there that are executed. If the input is not absolutely trusted, that's a problem (hello rm -rf /)."
And that told me what the problem was. In the end what it was is that if your key contains a hyphen '-' instead of an underscore '_' then you would encounter this error. Obviously my key had a hyphen which was getting converted into a command probably with a corresponding parameter
If you want to try this, do the following:
$ vi ~/test
and enter the below
key-1=value1
and save the file
Now try the following in your terminal
source ~/test
and you would see the error below
key-1=value1: command not found
When you use the source on command line have you ever encountered key=value: command not found this error? Or even in a bash script?
$ source <filename>
key=value: command not found
Most of the information on the Ubuntu website takes you in the direction of executing this command in the wrong shell. I was running a bash script with the above command throwing the above error. So according to what I found the first line of your bash script should have been #!/bin/bash and not #!/bin/sh which is exactly what I had.
I then ran the same command on the bash shell and got exactly the same error. Now that I knew this was not my shell, I had to figure out what the cause was.
Also instead of running a source <filename> you can apparently do a . <filename> and this also resulted in exactly the same error.
'source' apparently is supposed to be the long version of '.' command. On the bash prompt one can do:
$ source ~/.bashrc
or
$ . ~/.bashrc
It took me hours of debugging to finally figure out what I was doing wrong, and hence why I decided to document it hoping it might be useful to someone out there.
You need to understand what a source does before you can debug the issue. The problem with source is, its a shell built-in which means that there's no documentation available for it through man. On a terminal type the below:
$ man source
No manual entry for source
Now try the below
$ type source
source is a shell builtin
And when you try source on its own
$ source
bash: source: filename argument required
source: usage: source filename [arguments]
Right, so how do I get more information on source and what does a source actually do?
Since I was in bash, and source is a shell builtin the next thing is to do a man bash, and search for a source in the manual.
$ man bash
source filename [arguments]
Read and execute commands from filename in the current shell
environment and return the exit status of the last command exe‐
cuted from filename. If filename does not contain a slash,
filenames in PATH are used to find the directory containing
filename. The file searched for in PATH need not be executable.
When bash is not in posix mode, the current directory is
searched if no file is found in PATH. If the sourcepath option
to the shopt builtin command is turned off, the PATH is not
searched. If any arguments are supplied, they become the posi‐
tional parameters when filename is executed. Otherwise the
positional parameters are unchanged. The return status is the
status of the last command exited within the script (0 if no
commands are executed), and false if filename is not found or
cannot be read.
Or as quoted from http://superuser.com/questions/46139/what-does-source-do
"info source
BASH BUILTIN COMMANDS
Unless otherwise noted, each builtin command documented in this section
as accepting options preceded by - accepts -- to signify the end of the
options. The :, true, false, and test builtins do not accept options
and do not treat -- specially. The exit, logout, break, continue, let,
and shift builtins accept and process arguments beginning with - with-
out requiring --. Other builtins that accept arguments but are not
specified as accepting options interpret arguments beginning with - as
invalid options and require -- to prevent this interpretation.
: [arguments]
No effect; the command does nothing beyond expanding arguments
and performing any specified redirections. A zero exit code is
returned.
. filename [arguments]
source filename [arguments]
Read and execute commands from filename in the current shell
environment and return the exit status of the last command exe-
cuted from filename. If filename does not contain a slash, file
names in PATH are used to find the directory containing file-
name. The file searched for in PATH need not be executable.
When bash is not in posix mode, the current directory is
searched if no file is found in PATH. If the sourcepath option
to the shopt builtin command is turned off, the PATH is not
searched. If any arguments are supplied, they become the posi-
tional parameters when filename is executed. Otherwise the
positional parameters are unchanged. The return status is the
status of the last command exited within the script (0 if no
commands are executed), and false if filename is not found or
cannot be read."
Also quoting from stackoverflow "@robinst: Sourcing the file using . or source has the problem that you can also put commands in there that are executed. If the input is not absolutely trusted, that's a problem (hello rm -rf /)."
And that told me what the problem was. In the end what it was is that if your key contains a hyphen '-' instead of an underscore '_' then you would encounter this error. Obviously my key had a hyphen which was getting converted into a command probably with a corresponding parameter
If you want to try this, do the following:
$ vi ~/test
and enter the below
key-1=value1
and save the file
Now try the following in your terminal
source ~/test
and you would see the error below
key-1=value1: command not found
