Problem with Bash script: 'declare: not found'

Question

I had a script which was running fine but when I ran it today, it says declare: not found. I am using bash shell and path at the starting of the script is correct.

Two flagged lines in my script are as follows:

declare -a RESPONSE
RESPONSE=($RESULT)

It also says ( is unexpected but I guess that is coming up because of the first error. Worth mentioning point is when I type in declare directly works fine.

declare | grep USER shows

USER=ashfame
USERNAME=ashfame
           values="$SVN_BASH_USERNAME";

So, whats wrong here?

Answer 1

Are you using sh instead of bash? sh (linked to dash) does not support declare keyword, nor the syntax

VAR=(list) 

for initializing arrays.

Answer 2

I suspect that your "shebang" line (the optional first line of the file) is referencing sh instead of bash. It should be

#!/bin/bash

for bash scripts. If the first line of your script is

#!/bin/sh

then that would indicate that a strictly bourne-compatible shell is to be used; in the case of Ubuntu, dash is used. In many other distributions, this does not cause a problem, because they link /bin/sh to /bin/bash; however ubuntu links to /bin/dash in order to allow system scripts to run more rapidly.

The declare builtin is one of bash's many extensions to the Bourne shell script specification; dash just implements that specification without extensions.

Answer 3

How to reproduce the above error:

I'm using Ubuntu 14.04 64 bit. Put this code in a file:

#!/bin/sh 
declare -i FOOBAR=12; 
echo $FOOBAR; 

Run it like this:

el@apollo:~$ ./06.sh 
./test.sh: 2: ./test.sh: declare: not found

To fix it, do this instead:

#!/bin/bash
declare -i FOOBAR=12;
echo $FOOBAR;

Prints:

el@apollo:~$ ./06.sh 
12

Answer 4

I had the same issue, and then I remembered that you need to assign the right permissions to execute the shell script.

Change permission of the script, for example:

chmod 755 script.sh

Answer 5

Try running your script using /bin/bash in command line instead if sh (:

Instead of :

    sh script.sh

Try :

    /bin/bash script.sh

Answer 6

On Ubuntu, you may have a script which is executing other scripts within it, which I have run into.

some_dir/  
        | main.sh  
        | shhh.sh

#!/bin/bash -e

echo "file? $0"
# file? ./main.sh

echo "shell? $SHELL" 
# shell? /bin/bash

# sh shhh.sh
# file? shhh.sh
# shell? /bin/bash
# shhh.sh: 5: shhh.sh: declare: not found

$SHELL shhh.sh
# file? shhh.sh
# shell? /bin/bash
# foo? bar

#!/bin/bash -e

echo "file? $0"
# shhh.sh

echo "shell? $SHELL"
# shell? /bin/bash

declare foo="bar"

echo "foo? $foo"

Changing all sh some_script.sh to $SHELL some_script.sh fixed it.