Why does this command for qsub to submit multiple pbs scripts work in the bash shell but not fish?

Question

I have a bunch of .pbs files in one directory.

I can qsub the files no problem with this command in the bash shell but for the fish shell, I continuously hit enter and it just creates a new input line. Any ideas why it doesn't work in fish?

for file in *.pbs; do qsub $file; done

Because fish syntax != bash syntax: https://fishshell.com/docs/current/cmds/for.html — glenn jackman, Apr 11 '22 at 19:05
A good place to start is [Fish for bash users](https://fishshell.com/docs/current/fish_for_bash_users.html#) — glenn jackman, Apr 11 '22 at 20:11

faho · Accepted Answer · 2022-04-12T12:05:03.037

Fish's syntax for loops and other block constructs is different.

In this case it's

for file in *.pbs
    qsub $file
end

or, on one line:

for file in *.pbs; qsub $file; end

Other looping constructs look similar - no introductory "do" and they end with "end".

Other differences here: This behaves like bash with the nullglob option, so if no file matches the for-loop simply won't be executed, there's no need to guard for a literal *.pbs being passed.

Also the $file doesn't need to be quoted because it's set as one element and so it will be passed as one element, no word splitting takes place.

Fish uses a different script syntax from bash and other shells. To read up on it: Fish for bash users is the quick starting point, but the rest of the documentation is worth reading (in my, admittedly biased, opinion).

Why does this command for qsub to submit multiple pbs scripts work in the bash shell but not fish?

1 Answers1