Re: [HTCondor-users] odd behavior of condor_qedit

[Jason Patton <jpatton@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Stefano,

You are editing ClassAd expressions, and so unquoted character strings as assumed to be ClassAd attributes, and what counts as being "quoted" on the command line is not always obvious (I don't even claim to know all the rules here). This is indeed one of the more frustrating parts of using condor_qedit.

To make sure that your value is interpreted as a string, wrap the double-quoted value in single-quotes, e.g.:

desired_sites='"abba"'

Jason

On Tue, Apr 14, 2026 at 12:50âPM Stefano Belforte via HTCondor-users <htcondor-users@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

It seems that with condor_qedit I can set an ad to the string "123" (or
any numeric
I tried) but whenever I try an alphabetic string, I get undefined.
What am I doing wrong ?

[crabtw@vocms069 cluster1641599.proc0.subproc0]$ condor_qedit 1641601.0
desired_sites="123"
Set attribute "desired_sites" for 1 matching jobs.
[crabtw@vocms069 cluster1641599.proc0.subproc0]$ condor_q 1641601.0 -af
desired_sites
123
[crabtw@vocms069 cluster1641599.proc0.subproc0]$ condor_qedit 1641601.0
desired_sites="abba"
Set attribute "desired_sites" for 1 matching jobs.
[crabtw@vocms069 cluster1641599.proc0.subproc0]$ condor_q 1641601.0 -af
desired_sites
undefined
[crabtw@vocms069 cluster1641599.proc0.subproc0]$ condor_version
$CondorVersion: 25.0.3 2025-10-31 BuildID: 847298 PackageID: 25.0.3-1
GitSHA: dc94bfbb $
$CondorPlatform: x86_64_AlmaLinux9 $
[crabtw@vocms069 cluster1641599.proc0.subproc0]$

It is not something I need now, but alphanumeric strings behave oddily.
Maybe
a string can never start with a number ?

[crabtw@vocms069 cluster1641599.proc0.subproc0]$ condor_qedit 1641601.0
desired_sites="1a"
Update aborted, illegal value for : desired_sites
Transaction failed. No attributes were set.

About the use case, I was using this in JobRouter table

ÂÂSET DESIRED_SITES strcat(DESIRED_SITES, "T2_US_Caltech")

where the idea is to add a site to the desired ones.

but it is setting DESIRED_SITES to a null string, so I am trying to find
the correct way with condor_qedit for "quicker turnaround". Both claim
to accept a classAd _expression_, IIUC.

Thanks for you help

Stefano

_______________________________________________
HTCondor-users mailing list
To unsubscribe, send a message to htcondor-users-request@xxxxxxxxxxx with a
subject: Unsubscribe

The archives can be found at: https://www-auth.cs.wisc.edu/lists/htcondor-users/