Re: [HTCondor-users] odd behavior of condor_qedit

[John M Knoeller <johnkn@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

The linux command shell will strip quotes before condor_qedit can see them unless the quotes are escaped.  How you escape quotes depends on which command shell you are using.

So I would recommend you avoid the whole problem and do your edits by reading the changes from a file using

    condor_qedit <targets> -edits <classad-file>

where <targets> is what jobs to edit and <classad-file> is file in classad syntax.  The same format you would get by running condor_q -long.    In your case the file contents would be

   desired_sites = "abba"

-tj

---

From: HTCondor-users <htcondor-users-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx> on behalf of Stefano Belforte via HTCondor-users <htcondor-users@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, April 14, 2026 12:49 PM
To: HTCondor-Users Mail List <htcondor-users@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Stefano Belforte <stefano.belforte@xxxxxxx>
Subject: [HTCondor-users] odd behavior of condor_qedit

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

  SET 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/