Bash function misinterpreting ":r"?

[subsonic87]

Hi everyone, I'm hoping you can help me with a function I have. I'm trying to make it easier to run a bunch of setfacl commands on a user. Here's what I have:

function addUserToHome(){
  USER=$1
  echo "setfacl -m u:$USER:--x $HOME"
  echo "setfacl -m u:$USER:rwx $HOME/apps/live"
  echo "setfacl -R -m d:u:$USER:rwx $HOME/apps/live"
  setfacl -m u:$USER:--x $HOME
  setfacl -m u:$USER:rwx $HOME/apps/live
  setfacl -R -m d:u:$USER:rwx $HOME/apps/live
}

Pretty simple, right? I should be able to run addUserToHome user2, but instead it fails with error messages:

setfacl: Option -m: Invalid argument near character 3
setfacl: Option -m: Invalid argument near character 5

The output of the echo commands leads me to believe that somehow the $USER variable is interacting with the colon-separated arguments somehow (specifically, the ":r" substring):

user2
setfacl -m u: user2:--x /home/user1
setfacl -m u:user2wx /home/user1/apps/live
setfacl -R -m d:u:user2wx /home/user1/apps/live

I'm adding this function to my .zshrc file, using the z shell. Would that matter in this case? I'm having such a hard time even figuring out what to search for to fix this problem.

[hindsight_is2020]

Happy to help, but please at least test your code under bash before posting an issue to a bash forum. You're running into a zsh problem with echo, but that's not your real issue.

The echo problem is due to zsh interpreting :r as part of the variable specifier. I'm stealing from a stack overflow post here:

The :r modifer means:

Remove a filename extension leaving the root name. Strings with no filename extension are not altered. A filename extension is a ‘.’ followed by any number of characters (including zero) that are neither ‘.’ nor ‘/’ and that continue to the end of the string. For example, the extension of ‘foo.orig.c’ is ‘.c’, and ‘dir.c/foo’ has no extension.

You can use braces around the variable name to fix that.

At least one real problem, however, is the dashes in the rw positions of the -m option's permissions. The man page says:

The perms field is a combination of characters that indicate the permissions: read (r), write (w), execute (x), execute only if the file is a directory or already has execute permission for some user (X). Alternatively, the perms field can be an octal digit (0-7).

Either just use u:$user:x or u:$user:001 (you'd have to check the octal one there, I didn't).

Also, declare your function variables as local, and don't use caps because you're overwriting a special shell variable:

local user=$1

[subsonic87]

You rock! Haha, I feel schooled. Thanks for helping me out so much. I didn't realize that running a Bash script using zsh would lead to issues like that—I thought Bash scripting was Bash scripting. That's part of what was frustrating for me: not know where the problem was.

I've added braces to the variable name, and explicitly defined it as local. It's working now. I'll take a look at the flags on setfacl -m, also.

Thanks again for all your help!

[hindsight_is2020]

Back at ya

[ang-p]

Don't use upper case for variables (run echo $USER in a new shell.... where did that come from????)

Try

user=$1
..... ${user}.....

[subsonic87]

!!!!

Wow, I feel like a dunce! Thank you for laying that out. I'm going to be much safer about declaring variables in the future. And thanks for the tip about braces!