[SOLVED] Getting ksh: NF: not found on executing ssh command

Issue

My below command throwing error like : ksh: NF: not found.

sshpass -p 'pass' ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no user awk -v columnCount=64 -F '\\|' 'NF && NR > 1  && NR < 12058  && NF != columnCount+1 {exit 1}' /var/prod/scms/landing/store_data_20201202010002.dat && echo 'success' || echo 'failed'

Can anyone please help me here, what I have done wrong.

Solution

Original code is:

sshpass -p 'pass' ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no user awk -v columnCount=64 -F '\\|' 'NF && NR > 1  && NR < 12058  && NF != columnCount+1 {exit 1}' /var/prod/scms/landing/store_data_20201202010002.dat && echo 'success' || echo 'failed'

Relevant part is: ssh user awk -F '\\|' 'NF && NR > 1'

1. The local shell strips the single-quotes (while parsing the commandline) and so ssh never sees them.
2. ssh concatenates its arguments into a single string and passes it to the remote shell.
3. The remote shell receives from ssh: awk -F \\| NF && NR > 1
4. This is a pipeline (|) followed by a control command (&&)
5. Therefore the remote shell tries to run awk and NF in parallel, with awk stdout connected to NF stdin.
6. No program called NF is found so the remote shell throws the error seen.
7. Because the pipeline fails, the command after the && is not executed and so the redirection (> 1) does not happen and no attempt is made to run a command NR

Answered By - jhnc