Bug 1212775

Summary:	case in a for loop inside subshell causes syntax error
Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7	Reporter:	Jiri Jaburek <jjaburek>
Component:	bash	Assignee:	Ondrej Oprala <ooprala>
Status:	CLOSED ERRATA	QA Contact:	Martin Kyral <mkyral>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	7.1	CC:	isenfeld, mkyral, ooprala, ovasik
Target Milestone:	rc
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	x86_64
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:	bash-4.2.46-17.el7	Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:
Clones:	1240994 1241013 1241014 1241021 1241023 1241024 1245094 1552013 (view as bug list)		Environment:
Last Closed:	2015-11-19 04:39:50 UTC	Type:	Bug
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Jiri Jaburek 2015-04-17 09:56:01 UTC

Description of problem:

# this works
$ x=$(for i in test; do echo $i; done)
$ echo $x
test

# this too, works
$ i=test
$ x=$(case $i in test) echo test;; esac)
$ echo $x
test

# this does not
$ x=$(for i in test; do case $i in test) echo test;; esac; done)
-bash: syntax error near unexpected token `;;'

# however removing the output-into-variable makes it work
$ (for i in test; do case $i in test) echo test;; esac; done)
test


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
bash-4.2.46-12.el7

How reproducible:
always

Actual results:
expression fails on syntax error

Expected results:
the subshell output is assigned to a variable

Additional info:
This *works* on my bash-4.3.30-2.fc21, so there might have been an upstream fix.

Comment 1 Ondrej Oprala 2015-04-18 13:36:45 UTC

Hi Jiri,
Yes, this was fixed in 4.3. I have yet to look at the size of the change.

Meanwhile, the more verbose way of writing a case statement still seems to work:
x=$(for i in test; do case $i in (test) echo test;; esac; done)
#                                ^^

Comment 3 Ondrej Vasik 2015-05-18 13:04:16 UTC

Yes, he does.

Comment 8 errata-xmlrpc 2015-11-19 04:39:50 UTC

Since the problem described in this bug report should be
resolved in a recent advisory, it has been closed with a
resolution of ERRATA.

For information on the advisory, and where to find the updated
files, follow the link below.

If the solution does not work for you, open a new bug report.

https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2015-2144.html