How to execute nohup in an heredocument?

Question

I have this timeout code block:

#!/bin/bash

WB=$1
sleep 2h;
commands...
kill $WB

To run the script with nohup and in the background, I can paste it in a file, and execute:

nohup /opt/myscript.sh $$ &

What I aim to achieve:

Instead of pasting it in a file and execute, I would like to execute it directly from an heredoc:

/dev/fd/10 10<< 'EOF0'
#!/bin/bash

WB=$1
sleep 2h;
commands...
kill $WB
EOF0

I use an heredoc because heredocs are the only way to paste whole code-blocks directly into Bash, and then execute - Very efficient in my case.

My question:

How could I correctly use nohup and & with the above hereodc?

Note that the above heredoc is a special one, it's an external heredoc (EOF0), allowing 1 or more heredocs inside it (EOF1, EOF2...).

Answer 1

From what i understand, you want to copy the whole content of your script, and paste it as a heredoc to execute it. You can do this, but there's a catch: how do you assign a value to the positional parameter $1 that will appear in the heredoc? The trick here is to pass that argument to bash, by putting it after a -- sign (which separates the arguments you pass to bash itself from the arguments you pass to the script). Bash must of course read the commands from the stdin, so the -s flag must be specified.

To see this at work with the code from your example, open a new pseudoterminal and type this (beware: the quote signs near the first EOF0 are mandatory, they prevent the expansion of $1 inside the heredoc itself):

nohup bash -s -- $$ <<'EOF0' &
#!/bin/bash

WB=$1
sleep 2h;
commands...
kill $WB
EOF0

I must tell you however that EOF0 by itself has no special meaning at all. You can use whatever string you want for a heredoc delimiter (e.g. it could have been 'EOF' or 'HEREDOC_DELIMITER'): what matters is that there are single-quotes surrounding it, near the << sign; this prevents any expansion inside the heredoc, which enables you both to use script argument (just like you can use $1 in the code you posted) and to nest other heredocs.

Answer 2

Using your code:

nohup bash <<EOF &
WB=$1
sleep 2h;
commands...
kill \$WB
EOF

Note that $1 will be expanded when the code is read; to make $WB expand when the code is executed the $ needs to be quoted.