[ncl-talk] script containing loadscript not working from the Linux prompt

[Gus Correa]

Dear NCL experts

I've been banging my head on this, tried several variants
to no avail.

I have an NCL script that I need to execute from the Linux prompt.
Like this:

$ ncl MITgcmDiag2nc.ncl

The very first command in MITgcmDiag2nc.ncl loads another script,
which has just a very large number of NCL variable assignments.

scriptname="./MITgcmparms.ncl"
loadcript(scriptname)

The assignments in the lower script MITgcmparms.ncl
will vary (across jobs), and the whole lower script MITgcmparms.ncl
is generated on the fly by yet another shell script,
hence I cannot make them part of the upper script
MITgcmDiag2nc.ncl (which doesn't vary).
I could of course concatenate both scripts, then run the whole thing,
but that is not the ideal solution (and very ugly!).

Although the spelling is correct, and both scripts do
exist in the work directory, I get this error message:

****************************************************************************
[gus at master nconcl]$ ncl MITgcmDiag2nc.ncl
  Copyright (C) 1995-2017 - All Rights Reserved
  University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
  NCAR Command Language Version 6.4.0
  The use of this software is governed by a License Agreement.
  See http://www.ncl.ucar.edu/ for more details.
fatal:syntax error: line 15 in file MITgcmDiag2nc.ncl before or near \n
loadcript(scriptname)
---------------------^

fatal:syntax error: possibly an undefined procedure
****************************************************************************

What is really strange is that if I start ncl interactively,
I can do the pair of NCL commands above without a problem:

*****************************************************************************
[gus at master nconcl]$ ncl
  Copyright (C) 1995-2017 - All Rights Reserved
  University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
  NCAR Command Language Version 6.4.0
  The use of this software is governed by a License Agreement.
  See http://www.ncl.ucar.edu/ for more details.
ncl 0> scriptname="./MITgcmparms.ncl"
ncl 1> loadscript(scriptname)
ncl 3>
*****************************************************************************

However, I cannot run them interactively.
I really need to run them from the Linux command line.
These scripts are meant to run in batch mode,
as part of an ocean model integration job.
A job that runs on a remote node via job queue system,
without any manual/human assistance.

I tried many variants, such as to use the script name string
directly in loadscript, to enclose the loadscript command in
begin/end block delimiters, etc, to no avail.
I read and re-read the appropriate sections in the NCL Reference Guide,
but I could not find any clue on why something that works interactively
in NCL can fail so miserably from the Linux prompt.
I tried it on tcsh and on bash with the same exact error.

As shown above, I am using NCL 6.4.0, downloaded from ESG.

Any help is appreciated.

Thank you,
Gus Correa