SC1036 – ShellCheck Wiki

`(` is invalid here. Did you forget to escape it?

Problematic code:

echo (foo) bar

Correct code:

Depends on your intention:

echo "(foo) bar"  # Literal parentheses
echo "$(foo) bar" # Command expansion
echo "foo bar"    # Tried to use parentheses for grouping or function invocation

Rationale:

ShellCheck expected an ordinary shell word but found an opening parenthesis instead.

Determine what you intended the parenthesis to do and rewrite accordingly. Common issues include:

Wanting them to be literal, as in echo (FAIL) Some tests failed. In this case, it requires quoting.
Wanting command expansion, as in echo Today is (date). Add the missing $: echo "Today is $(date)"
Adding parentheses because other languages need them in that context, such as foo (bar, 42) to call a function. This should be foo bar 42. Also, shells do not support tuples or passing arrays as single parameters.

Exceptions:

Bash allows some parentheses as part of assignment-like tokens to certain commands, including export and eval. This is a workaround in Bash to allow commands that normally would not be valid:

eval foo=(bar)       # Valid command
echo foo=(bar)       # Invalid syntax
f=foo; eval $f=(bar) # Also invalid

In these cases, please quote the command, such as eval "foo=(bar)". This does not change the behavior, but stops relying on Bash-specific parsing quirks.

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ShellCheck is a static analysis tool for shell scripts. This page is part of its documentation.