Question

I want to prompt a user via command line & ask what specific rows need to be cut from a data file using either head or tail. My script will employ head and tail using the inputs as variables for both head and tail commands. This is what I have thus far along with the error message:

echo -n "What rows need to be cut from your data file: "
read before
read after
head -n $before /home/rent_list
tail -n $after /home/rent_list 

Error message:

-bash: ./rent_list: bin/bash: bad interpreter: No such file or directory

Update: This is what I am getting now:

 What rows need to be cut from your data file: 4

Mack Tools  Milwaukee Wisconsin [e-mail] 414 2248893
Terry Tools Orlando Florida [e-mail] 407 2439812
Park Tools  Riviera Beach Florida [e-mail] 516 5370923
Bike Tools  Orlando Florida [e-mail] 407 3420983
tail: /home/renter_list: invalid number of lines

Answer 1

The error-message seems to be saying that your script starts with #!bin/bash instead of #!/bin/bash (that is, that you’re missing a / before bin/bash).

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Update: Your new error-message is because you’re not entering a number. You have an echo, followed by two reads. For the first read, you’re entering 4, but for the second, you’re just hitting Enter. So the tail command is tail -n /home/rent_list.

If you want to use the same number for both commands, you can write:

echo -n "What rows need to be cut from your data file: "
read num_rows
head -n $num_rows /home/rent_list
tail -n $num_rows /home/rent_list