TIL - building bash using cat and tee and EOF

So I've started to make more use of cat and tee and the EOF symbol when creating documentation describing how one can create various different artefacts from, say, Bash on Linux and macOS.

Typically, I'm focusing upon configuration files e.g. files with .conf and .yaml but, a few days back, I wanted to create a Bash script.

Here's an example of what I'd do for a containerd.conf configuration file: -

cat <<EOF | tee /etc/modules-load.d/containerd.conf
overlay
br_netfilter
EOF

Nice and simple, right ?

I then tried the same for a Bash script, here's a trivial example that munges a JSON document - me.json : -

{
    "name": "Dave Hay",
    "eddress": "david_hay@uk.ibm.com",
    "github": "davidhay1969"
}

called ./hello.sh created thusly: -

cat << EOF | tee hello.sh
#!/bin/bash
name=$(cat ~/me.json | jq -r .name)
echo "Hello, "$name
EOF

So, when I paste that into a macOS Terminal session, using /bin/bash this is what I see: -

cat << EOF | tee hello.sh

> #!/bin/bash

> name=$(cat ~/me.json | jq -r .name)

> echo "Hello, "$name

> EOF

#!/bin/bash

name=Dave Hay

echo "Hello, "

with the resulting script looking a bit ... weird ...

cat hello.sh

#!/bin/bash

name=Dave Hay

echo "Hello, "

Having made the script executable: -

chmod +x hello.sh

it doesn't run too well: -

./hello.sh

./hello.sh: line 2: Hay: command not found

Hello,

Thankfully, when I hit the original issue a few days back, something I read ( and, alas, I didn't grab the actual source ), the trick is to wrap the first EOF in single quotes, like this: -

cat << 'EOF' | tee hello.sh

#!/bin/bash

name=$(cat ~/me.json | jq -r .name)

echo "Hello, "$name

EOF

This is what happens when I paste the above into the same Terminal Bash session: -

cat << 'EOF' | tee hello.sh

> #!/bin/bash

> name=$(cat ~/me.json | jq -r .name)

> echo "Hello, "$name

> EOF

#!/bin/bash

name=$(cat ~/me.json | jq -r .name)

echo "Hello, "$name

and the corresponding script looks OK: -

cat hello.sh

#!/bin/bash

name=$(cat ~/me.json | jq -r .name)

echo "Hello, "$name

and, even better, it actually works: -

./hello.sh

Hello, Dave Hay

Can you say "Yay" ?