Command not found error in Bash variable assignment

Question

I have this script called test sh      bin bash STR    Hello World  echo  STR   when I run sh test sh I get this   test sh  line 2  STR  command not found   What am I doing wrong   I look at extremely basic beginners bash scripting tutorials online and this is how they say to declare variables    So I m not sure what I m doing wrong   I m on Ubuntu Server 9 10  And yes  bash is located at  bin bash

User · Accepted Answer

You cannot have spaces around the   sign  When you write  STR    quot foo quot   bash tries to run a command named STR with 2 arguments  the strings   and foo  When you write  STR  foo  bash tries to run a command named STR with 1 argument  the string  foo  When you write  STR  foo  bash tries to run the command foo with STR set to the empty string in its environment  I m not sure if this helps to clarify or if it is mere obfuscation  but note that   the first command is exactly equivalent to  STR  quot   quot   quot foo quot   the second is the same as STR  quot  foo quot   and the last is equivalent to STR  quot  quot  foo   The relevant section of the sh language spec  section 2 9 1 states   A  quot simple command quot  is a sequence of optional variable assignments and redirections  in any sequence  optionally followed by words and redirections  terminated by a control operator   In that context  a word is the command that bash is going to run   Any string containing    in any position other than at the beginning of the string  which is not a redirection and in which the portion of the string before the   is a valid variable name is a variable assignment  while any string that is not a redirection or a variable assignment is a command   In STR    quot foo quot   STR is not a variable assignment

User · Answer

In the interactive mode everything looks fine     str  Hello World    echo  str Hello World   Obviously    as Johannes said  no space around    In case there is any space around   then in the interactive mode it gives errors as     No command  str  found

User · Answer

Drop the spaces around the   sign      bin bash  STR  Hello World   echo  STR

User · Answer

When you define any variable then you do not have to put in any extra spaces   E g   name    Stack Overflow       it is not valid  you will get an error saying-  Command not found    So remove spaces   name  Stack Overflow     and it will work fine

User · Answer

I know this has been answered with a very high-quality answer  But  in short  you cant have spaces      bin bash STR    Hello World  echo  STR   Didn t work because of the spaces around the equal sign  If you were to run        bin bash STR  Hello World  echo  STR   It would work

[bash] Command not found error in Bash variable assignment

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