': not a valid identifier

Question

I have removed the two if statements from before and replaced them with a case statement and tried to remove all the error from the code. I am trying to run this code but i

Answer 1

Addressing the issue in the title, ': not a valid identifier

This happens when read is passed a variable name that ends with a carriage return symbol.

When that symbol is printed, it sends the cursor back to the beginning of the line.

Thus, read foo tries to print:

foo': not a valid identifier

However, because sends the cursor back, what it actually prints is:

': not a valid identifier

To fix this, run dos2unix on your file; run :set fileformat=unix in vim, or otherwise transform it to have UNIX newlines instead of DOS newlines.