I have the following command saved in mat.txt file:
printf "
_ ____ __ _
_ __ (_)_ __/ ___|_ __ __ _ / _| |_
| '_ \| \ \/ / | | '__/ _` | |_| __|
| | | | |> <| |___| | | (_| | _| |_
|_| |_|_/_/\_\\____|_| \__,_|_| \__|
"
when I execute this file after made it executable using:
chmod +x mat.txt
It gives me an Error:
It's saying like command not found, file end reached when searching for ' & syntaxerror.
Anyone knows why?
From man bash:
Enclosing characters in double quotes preserves the literal value of all characters within the quotes, with the exception of $, `, , and, when history expansion is enabled, !.
In other words, " ... " is not sufficient to protect the unbalanced backtick on line 4 of your text; the shell is interpreting it as the start of a command substitution.
OTOH you can't use single quotes, because your text contains single quotes.
I'd suggest avoiding the issue of quoting altogether by using a here document. You should also use a shebang to make sure your file is interpreted by the intended shell. So:
#!/bin/sh
cat <<'TXT'
_ ____ __ _
_ __ () / ___|_ __ __ _ / | |
| '_ | \ / / | | '/ ` | || |
| | | | |> <| |___| | | (| | _| |
|| ||//_\____|_| \,|| __|
TXT
then
$ ./mat.txt
_ ____ __ _
_ __ (_)_ __/ ___|_ __ __ _ / _| |_
| '_ \| \ \/ / | | '__/ _` | |_| __|
| | | | |> <| |___| | | (_| | _| |_
|_| |_|_/_/\_\\____|_| \__,_|_| \__|
You didn't ask for a specific interpreter in your question. Therefore, Python(which allows assigning a multi-line string to a variable using triple quotes be it single ''' ... ''' or double """ ... """) might be an option like so:
#!/bin/python3
a = '''
_ ____ __ _
_ __ () / ___|_ __ __ _ / | |
| '_ | \ / / | | '/ ` | || |
| | | | |> <| |___| | | (| | _| |
|| ||//_\____|_| \,|| __|
'''
print(a)
Which executes like so:
$ ./mat.txt
_ ____ __ _
_ __ () / ___|_ __ __ _ / | |
| '_ | \ / / | | '/ ` | || |
| | | | |> <| |___| | | (| | _| |
|| ||//_____|_| \,|| __|
