here-document gives 'unexpected end of file' error

Question

I need my script to send an email from terminal. Based on what I\'ve seen here and many other places online, I formatted it like this:

Answer 1

When I want to have docstrings for my bash functions, I use a solution similar to the suggestion of user12205 in a duplicate of this question.

See how I define USAGE for a solution that:

• auto-formats well for me in my IDE of choice (sublime)
• is multi-line
• can use spaces or tabs as indentation
• preserves indentations within the comment.

function foo {
    # Docstring
    read -r -d '' USAGE <<'    END'
        # This method prints foo to the terminal.
        #
        # Enter `foo -h` to see the docstring.
        #      It has indentations and multiple lines.
        #
        # Change the delimiter if you need hashtag for some reason.
        # This can include $$ and = and eval, but won't be evaluated
    END


    if [ "$1" = "-h" ]
    then
        echo "$USAGE" | cut -d "#" -f 2 | cut -c 2-
        return
    fi

    echo "foo"
}

So foo -h yields:

This method prints foo to the terminal.

Enter `foo -h` to see the docstring.
     It has indentations and multiple lines.

Change the delimiter if you need hashtag for some reason.
This can include $$ and = and eval, but won't be evaluated

Explanation

cut -d "#" -f 2: Retrieve the second portion of the # delimited lines. (Think a csv with "#" as the delimiter, empty first column).

cut -c 2-: Retrieve the 2nd to end character of the resultant string

Also note that if [ "$1" = "-h" ] evaluates as False if there is no first argument, w/o error, since it becomes an empty string.