How to solve ambigious redirect error?

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

hi all,
i had the below script

filename = /osa/data1/output.txt
printf '%27s%53s\n' ' CURRENT DATE'   26-08-2014  >> $filename

iam getting the ambigiuos redirect error in the 2nd line of the code...please guide me

regards,
vasa saikumar

2

There should also be a command not found error?
Try:

filename=/osa/data1/output.txt

Without spaces around =

3

hi ,
ya i am getting the command not found error to for every line ..

like

/osa/data1/output.txt : line1: command not found

---------- Post updated at 12:05 AM ---------- Previous update was at 12:03 AM ----------

will it remove the ambigious error..?

4

Yes sure, because of the first statement $filename becomes empty therefore the redirect is appending to nothing and becomes ambiguous.

If you use double quotes around "$filename"

printf '%27s%53s\n' ' CURRENT DATE'   26-08-2014  >> "$filename"

then it becomes an empty string and the message would be

No such file or directory

(at least in bash) which is a whole lot more understandable...

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The necessity of double quotes around the file names are a bash quirk, in other Bourne shell derivatives / POSIX shells this is not necessary..