BASH Syntax error near unexpected token 'done'

Question

Any idea of what the problem could be?

My code is:

#!/bin/bash
while :
do
echo \"Press [CTRL+C] to stop..\"
sleep 1
done

Saved it a

Answer 1

I was getting the same error on Cygwin; I did the following (one of them fixed it):

1. Converted TABS to SPACES
2. ran dos2unix on the .(ba)sh file

Answer 2

Edit your code in any linux environment then you won't face this problem. If edit in windows notepad any space take it as ^M.

Answer 3

Run cat -v file.sh.

You most likely have a carriage return or no-break space in your file. cat -v will show them as ^M and M-BM- or M- respectively. It will similarly show any other strange characters you might have gotten into your file.

Remove the Windows line breaks with

tr -d '\r' < file.sh > fixedfile.sh

Answer 4

There's a way you can get this problem without having mixed newline problems (at least, in my shell, which is GNU bash v4.3.30):

#!/bin/bash
# foo.sh

function foo() {
    echo "I am quoting a thing `$1' inside a function."
}

while [ "$input" != "y" ]; do
    read -p "Hit `y' to continue: " -n 1 input
    echo
done

foo "What could possibly go wrong?"

$ ./foo.sh
./foo.sh: line 11: syntax error near unexpected token `done'
./foo.sh: line 11: `done'

This is because bash expands backticks inside double-quoted strings (see the bash manual on quoting and command substitution), and before finding a matching backtick, will interpret any additional double quotes as part of the command substitution:

$ echo "Command substitution happens inside double-quoted strings: `ls`"
Command substitution happens inside double-quoted strings: foo.sh
$ echo "..even with double quotes: `grep -E "^foo|wrong" foo.sh`"
..even with double quotes: foo "What could possibly go wrong?"

You can get around this by escaping the backticks in your string with a backslash, or by using a single-quoted string.

I'm not really sure why this only gives the one error message, but I think it has to do with the function definition:

#!/bin/bash
# a.sh

function a() {
    echo "Thing's `quoted'"
}
a
while true; do
    echo "Other `quote'"
done

#!/bin/bash
# b.sh

echo "Thing's `quoted'"
while true; do
    echo "Other `quote'"
done

$ ./a.sh
./a.sh: line 10: syntax error near unexpected token `done'
./a.sh: line 10: `done'
$ ./b.sh
./b.sh: command substitution: line 6: unexpected EOF while looking for matching `''
./b.sh: command substitution: line 9: syntax error: unexpected end of file
Thing's quote'
./b.sh: line 7: syntax error near unexpected token `done'
./b.sh: line 7: `done'

Answer 5

Open new file named foobar

nano -w foobar

Input script

 #!/bin/bash
 while [ 0 = 0 ]; do
   echo "Press [CTRL+C] to stop.."
   sleep 1
 done;

Exit and save

CTRL+X then Y and Enter

Set script executable and run

chmod +x foobar
./foobar

Answer 6

What is the error you're getting?

$ bash file.sh
test.sh: line 8: syntax error: unexpected end of file

If you get that error, you may have bad line endings. Unix uses <LF> at the end of the file while Windows uses <CR><LF>. That <CR> character gets interpreted as a character.

You can use od -a test.sh to see the invisible characters in the file.

$ od -a test.sh
0000000    #   !   /   b   i   n   /   b   a   s   h  cr  nl   #  sp  cr
0000020   nl   w   h   i   l   e  sp   :  cr  nl   d   o  cr  nl  sp  sp
0000040   sp  sp   e   c   h   o  sp   "   P   r   e   s   s  sp   [   C
0000060    T   R   L   +   C   ]  sp   t   o  sp   s   t   o   p   "  cr
0000100   nl  sp  sp  sp  sp   s   l   e   e   p  sp   1  cr  nl   d   o
0000120    n   e  cr  nl                                                
0000124

The sp stands for space, the ht stands for tab, the cr stands for <CR> and the nl stands for <LF>. Note that all of the lines end with cr followed by a nl character.

You can also use cat -v test.sh if your cat command takes the -v parameter.

If you have dos2unix on your box, you can use that command to fix your file:

$ dos2unix test.sh