Script not working but command works outside of script

Question

I have a very simple script that basically runs a command and then emails the report to a user:

#!/bin/bash FROMDATE=`date -d "last week 13:00 " '+%Y-%m-%d'` TODATE=`date '+%Y-%m-%d'` SLOWLOG='/var/log/mysql/slow-queries.log' REPORT='/home/user/slow.log.'$TODATE PTQUERY='/usr/bin/pt-query-digest' SUBJECT="Slow Query Report -- $TODATE" EMAIL="[email protected]" $PTQUERY --since=\'$FROMDATE\' --until=\'$TODATE\' $SLOWLOG > $REPORT /usr/bin/mutt -s "$SUBJECT" "$EMAIL" < $REPORT 

Everything works perfect when I run this manually (below)

/usr/bin/pt-query-digest --since='2015-10-21' --until='2015-10-28' /var/log/mysql/slow-queries.log > /home/user/slow.log 

And if I echo the line in the script:

/usr/bin/pt-query-digest --since='2015-10-21' --until='2015-10-28' /var/log/mysql/slow-queries.log 

When I run the script I get an error

Invalid --since value at /usr/bin/pt-query-digest line 13562. 

So it looks like it could be something with the single quotes? I'm not sure. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

You're escaping the single quotes in the script, which means they don't get interpreted by the shell. That means that pt-query-digest gets the literal string '2015-10-21' rather than just the date, 2015-10-21. pt-query-digest presumably does not know what to do with the single quotes.

You should get rid of the escaped single quotes in --since=\'$FROMDATE\' and just use double quotes instead. Make sure to modify both uses in that line.