bash: syntax error near unexpected token

[Hans Mulder]

Benjamin Kaplan wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 11:33 PM, kreglet <kreglet at gmail.com> wrote:

>> desktop:~/bin$ modtest.py
>> desktop:~/bin$ evenodd(45)
>> bash: syntax error near unexpected token `45'
>>
> 
> And this is what's supposed to happen any time you try this in any
> shell. When you call evenodd, bash looks for a program or shell
> built-in called evenodd. Which doesn't exist.

That's not what "syntax error means".  If the problem were that
evenodd does not exist as a shell function, the error would have
been "bash: evenodd: command not found".

I do not understand why bash says the token `45' is unexpected.
The '(' token is the problem.  It's a syntax error because in
bash syntax function arguments are not enclosed in parentheses:

$ function evenodd {
 >     if (( $1 % 2 ))
 >     then echo $1 is odd
 >     else echo $1 is even
 >     fi
 > }
$ evenodd 45
45 is odd
$ evenodd(45)
bash: syntax error near unexpected token `45'
$

Of course, this is completely off-topic.

-- HansM