Bash script to pull variable credentials from another file using ". filename"

Question

Running Ubuntu 18.04 subsystem on Windows 10, but have also tried to do this on a Ubuntu 18.04 Google cloud virtual machine.

I've realised that baking my login credentials into my scripts is a rather dumb idea, not just for the security risks but because I'll have to edit every script if I change my password...

I discovered that I should be able to have a file that contains my credentials and put them "inline" when I run my script by using ". file", however when I run my script it just returns an error that the file isn't found.

Using ls on the directory I run the script from contains:

• test.sh
• credential

"credential" file contents

USER=<username>
PWD=<password>

Current script for test.sh

#!/bin/bash

set -eu

DS=$(date "+%Y-%m-%d" -d "11 days ago")
DE=$(date "+%Y-%m-%d" -d "1 day ago")

. credential

rm -f cookiejar

curl  /dev/null -s -S -L -f -c cookiejar 'https://url/auth/authenticate' -d name=$USER -d passwd=$PWD

Error Message

+ set -eu
+ date +%Y-%m-%d -d 11 days ago
+ DS=2020-01-05
+ date +%Y-%m-%d -d 1 day ago
+ DE=2020-01-15
+ account=465
+ . credential test.sh: 9: .: credential: not found

I've tried messing around with the spaces between the ". credential" line of the script and tried to find out what I might be doing wrong online but haven't been able to google search correctly to find a relevant answer.

Can someone confirm what I'm missing/ not aware of here or point me to documentation that might help? This is my first time trying to do something like this so apologies if this is a basic question.

Answer 1

. uses path lookup to find the file named by its argument. Since the current working directory typically is not in your PATH (nor should it), . won't find the file. Instead, use

. ./credential

to bypass PATH lookup.

This isn't really safe, though, because now you are restricted to running the script from the proper directory. Either put credential in a directory on your PATH , or use an absolute path to specify where credential is located.