Question

Hi i’m new to bash scripting but cannot understand why i get the command not found error when i try to assign to a local variable the result of this function call with parameters 20120920 5.

    #!/bin/bash

function nDaysAgo () #date # daysago
{
 date -d "${1} - ${2} days" +%Y%m%d;
}

so the script name is ndaysago, i’m first invoking the script with . ndaysago and then assigning the value like this:

newdate= nDaysAgo 20120910 5

it prints: 20120905: command not found

Meaning that the date execution is made but then tries to use the output as command, thats not what i would expect.

i have also tried assigning the new value to a variable within the function like so:

#!/bin/bash

function nDaysAgo () #date # daysago
{
 var=$(date -d "${1} - ${2} days" +%Y%m%d)
}

but still nothing, mmmmmm

Answer 1

Spaces are not allowed around the = when assigning a variable. To invoke a function you should use the $(...) syntax which is called command substitution.

Change to:

newdate=$(nDaysAgo 20120910 5)