Subject: Re: bug#8654: head
From: Eric Blake <[email-masked]>
To: Ivan DI PRIMA <[email-masked]>
Cc: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 10:30:22 -0600
List-Id: <debbugs-submit.debbugs.gnu.org>

tag 8654 notabug
close 8654
thanks

On 05/11/2011 02:15 AM, Ivan DI PRIMA wrote:
> Hi I run the following line:
> 
> $ set header = `head -5 ~/buffer/t1xp_axi2rgv_fifo.vhd`
> 
> and get:
> 
> Missing }.
> 
> Any ideas?

Thanks for the report.  However, this is not a bug in head, but in your
usage of your shell.

What does this output:

head -5 ~/buffer/t1xp_axi2rgv_fifo.vhd

If it is not valid csh shell script (and I'm assuming your using csh,
based on your syntax for using set), then that explains why csh, not
head, is complaining that after the `` substitution has completed, the
resulting text can't be parsed (because it is unquoted, the shell may be
trying to do word splitting on the results, but is getting thrown off by
unbalanced {} in the words to be split).  I'm not a csh user, but does
adding "" around the `` help, as in:

set header = "`head -5 ~/buffer/t1xp_axi2rgv_fifo.vhd`"

I'm marking this bug closed, although we can always reopen it if you can
prove that the problem was in head rather than in your use of shell code.

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-- 
Eric Blake   [email-masked]    +1-801-349-2682
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org