read: Illegal option -d

Question

Here is the offending part of my script:

read -d '' TEXT <<'EOF'
Some Multiline
text that
I would like
in 
a 
var
EOF

echo "$TEXT" > ~/some/file.txt

and the error:

read: 175: Illegal option -d

I use this read -d all over the place and it works fine. Not sure why its not happy now. I'm running the script on Ubuntu 10.10

Fixes? Workarounds?

Answer 1

If you run sh and then try that command, you get:

read: 1: Illegal option -d

If you do it while still in bash, it works fine.

I therefore deduce that your script is not running under bash.

Make sure that your script begins with the line:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

(or equivalent) so that the correct shell is running the script.

Alternatively, if you cannot do that (because the script is not a bash one), just be aware that -d is a bash feature and may not be available in other shells. In that case, you will need to find another way.