Re: Syntax error: Bad substitution

[Ralph Alvy <ralph@ralphalvy.com>]

Matthew Clarke wrote:

> Sat, Oct 28, 2006 at 05:14:55PM -0700, Ralph Alvy may have written:
> 
>> Matthew Clarke wrote:
>> 
>> > Fri, Oct 27, 2006 at 08:32:32PM -0700, Ralph Alvy may have written:
>> > 
>> >> I'm getting the following error when running dosemu 1.2.2 under a
>> >> newly installed Kubuntu 6.10:
>> >> 
>> >> ./xdosemu: 86: Syntax error: Bad substitution
>> >> 
>> >> What might be going on here?
> 
> [ snip ]
> 
>> 84        -install)
>> 85            INSTALL=1
>> 86            if [ -n "$2" -a "${2:0:1}" != "-" ]; then
>> 87              PROPRIETARY=$2
> 
> Line 1 of the script says "#! /bin/sh", which implies that the code in the
> script is written in the syntax understood by the Bourne shell.  However,
> ${2:0:1} is syntax for the GNU Bourne-again shell (AKA bash), not the
> Bourne shell.  My guess is that your other distributions make /bin/sh a
> symbolic link to /bin/bash, but that Kubuntu 6.10 points /bin/sh to some
> other shell that understands Bourne shell syntax but not bash syntax, so
> the other systems hide this error in the script but Kubuntu 6.10 doesn't.
> 
> If bash is installed as /bin/bash, you can change the first line of the
> script to
> 
> #! /bin/bash
> 
> to avoid the problem.
> 
> Matt.

Thanks, Matt. This solved it nicely.