Jenkinsfile: illegal string body character after dollar sign; solution: either escape a literal dollar sign "\$5" or bracket the value expression

Question

My pipeline fails at the sh """ element of the Jenkinsfile. Any idea where things go wrong?

    stage('Install dependencies') {                 when { expression { return params.dependencies } } }         steps {             sh """               apt-get update                             apt-get install -y openssh-server net-tools inetutils-ping python-pip rubygems                             apt-get install -y \                                 apt-transport-https \                                 ca-certificates \                                 curl \                                 gnupg2 \                                 software-properties-common                              curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/debian/gpg | apt-key add -                              add-apt-repository \                                "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/debian \                                $(lsb_release -cs) \                                stable"                              apt-get update                             apt-get install -y docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io                             curl -L "https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.23.2/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m)" -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose                             chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose                             gem install serverspec pygmy             """         }     } 

The error message is:

WorkflowScript: 35: illegal string body character after dollar sign; solution: either escape a literal dollar sign "\$5" or bracket the value expression "${5}" @ line 35, column 17. 

Answer 1

Replace double quotes """ with single quotes '''.

sh '''     apt-get update      //... ''' 

Whenever Groovy sees $ inside the double quotes, it treats this string as GString and does string interpolation. However, in your case, a character $ is not used in the context of interpolation and it fails. Alternatively, you could escape \$ but it makes more sense to switch to single quoted string.