Question

Example – any bash keyword (e.g. else or in) will also cause this:

$ python -c 'import sys;for p in sys.path:print p'
  File "<string>", line 1
    import sys;for p in sys.path:print p
                 ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

Double quotes doesn’t fix it.

Answer 1

This has nothing to do with the fact that for is a Bash keyword; it’s simply that

import sys;for p in sys.path:print p

is not valid Python syntax. You’d get the same error if you ran python with no arguments and then typed that in at the prompt.

You can fix it by adding a newline:

import sys
for p in sys.path:print p

which you can do in your Bash command by writing either this:

python -c ' import sys
            for p in sys.path:print p
          '

or this:

python -c $'import sys\nfor p in sys.path:print p'

(where $'...' is a Bash syntax that allows C-like escape sequences in strings, such as \n for newline).