Unexpected `then' bash script

Question

How do I fix this error? I can\'t see anything wrong with my syntax.

ipcheck() {
  echolog \"[INFO] Enabling IP Forwarding...\"
  sudo echo 1 > /proc/sys/         


        

Answer 1

Shell scripting tends to be a lot more whitespace sensitive than you might be used to if you've come from other programming languages (read: C). Your if line has the problems. You are probably looking for:

if [ $(cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward) == "0" ]

The thing to remember here is that [ is not part of any special if syntax - it's the name of a program (sometimes a shell builtin). If you think of it like that, you can see how the command line parser needs it to be separated. Similarly, the [ command (or builtin) expects the closing ] to be separated from its other arguments, so you need a space before it, too.