Alright, here\'s what I\'m trying to do. I\'m attempting to write a quick build script in bash that will check out a private repository from GitHub on a remote server. To do thi
It's not certain, but it may help to quote where you use public_key, i.e.
curl -u 'username:password' \
-d '{"title":"Test Deploy Key", "key":"'"$public_key"'"}' \
-i https://api.github.com/repos/username/repository/keys
Otherwise it will be much easier to debug if you use the shell's debugging options set -vx
near the top of your bash script.
You'll see each line of code (or block (for, while, etc) as it is in your file. Then you see each line of code with the variables expanded to their values.
If you're still stuck, edit your post to show the expanded values of variables for the problem line in your script. What you have looks reasonable at first glance.