Getting an "ambiguous redirect" error

The following line in my Bash script

 echo $AAAA"     "$DDDD"         "$MOL_TAG  >>  ${OUPUT_RESULTS}

gives me this error:

 line 46: ${OUPUT_RESULTS}: ambiguous redirect

Why?

Solution 1:

Bash can be pretty obtuse sometimes.

The following commands all return different error messages for basically the same error:

$ echo hello >
bash: syntax error near unexpected token `newline`

$ echo hello > ${NONEXISTENT}
bash: ${NONEXISTENT}: ambiguous redirect

$ echo hello > "${NONEXISTENT}"
bash: : No such file or directory

Adding quotes around the variable seems to be a good way to deal with the "ambiguous redirect" message: You tend to get a better message when you've made a typing mistake -- and when the error is due to spaces in the filename, using quotes is the fix.

Solution 2:

Do you have a variable named OUPUT_RESULTS or is it the more likely OUTPUT_RESULTS?

michael@isolde:~/junk$ ABC=junk.txt
michael@isolde:~/junk$ echo "Booger" > $ABC
michael@isolde:~/junk$ echo "Booger" >> $ABB
bash: $ABB: ambiguous redirect
michael@isolde:~/junk$ 

Solution 3:

put quotes around your variable. If it happens to have spaces, it will give you "ambiguous redirect" as well. also check your spelling

echo $AAAA"     "$DDDD"         "$MOL_TAG  >>  "${OUPUT_RESULTS}"

eg of ambiguous redirect

$ var="file with spaces"
$ echo $AAAA"     "$DDDD"         "$MOL_TAG >> ${var}
bash: ${var}: ambiguous redirect
$ echo $AAAA"     "$DDDD"         "$MOL_TAG >> "${var}"
$ cat file\ with\ spaces
aaaa     dddd         mol_tag