Inaccuracy in dev guide for createrawtransaction

[royalfork]

Location: https://bitcoin.org/en/developer-examples#simple-raw-transaction

I received a JSON parse error when following the guide's steps for creating a raw transaction.

Here's what happened on my machine:

~/.b/t/b/index ❯❯❯ bitcoin-cli -regtest listunspent                     ⏎
[
    {
        "txid" : "0b95cf0e1b6c9579e53ae147a497c49e635091f53aa996e7e27c87fce388cd0e",
        "vout" : 0,
        "address" : "mmZ2grFSzgrFCAs1Z2m91mLKgJkKQYnnho",
        "scriptPubKey" : "2102616d968e135f6e2488c5e45fb08c99838ad7f5ddd918d4d98a23a12b218fdc9bac",
        "amount" : 50.00000000,
        "confirmations" : 101
    },
    {
        "txid" : "c2b30d0a5aae70d138fba3496bbbd95cd4dffb25b98a096c5421e19f9dc38816",
        "vout" : 0,
        "address" : "mjUT9N2VaqyJ1xQkeraEWd7fu42ufCsAjr",
        "scriptPubKey" : "76a9142b6756910ee623e6d21116e7c334c08577b4fa0888ac",
        "amount" : 40.00000000,
        "confirmations" : 1
    },
    {
        "txid" : "c2b30d0a5aae70d138fba3496bbbd95cd4dffb25b98a096c5421e19f9dc38816",
        "vout" : 1,
        "address" : "mrhvdMRRcBeapkyrHjiYrCZQJSzwPXvLXw",
        "account" : "",
        "scriptPubKey" : "76a9147abc9143e394ba459bb9c5d55f5cf9471c29d78688ac",
        "amount" : 10.00000000,
        "confirmations" : 1
    }
]
~/.b/t/b/index ❯❯❯ bitcoin-cli -regtest createrawtransaction '''
    [
      {
        "txid": "0b95cf0e1b6c9579e53ae147a497c49e635091f53aa996e7e27c87fce388cd0e",
        "vout": 0
      }
    ]
    ''' '''
    {
      "mrhvdMRRcBeapkyrHjiYrCZQJSzwPXvLXw": 49.9999
    }'''
error: Error parsing JSON:'
    [
      {
        "txid": "0b95cf0e1b6c9579e53ae147a497c49e635091f53aa996e7e27c87fce388cd0e",
        "vout": 0
      }
    ]
    '

Here's what the documentation says:

bitcoin-cli -regtest createrawtransaction '''
[
{
"txid": "'$UTXO_TXID'",
"vout": '$UTXO_VOUT'
}
]
''' '''
{
"'$NEW_ADDRESS'": 49.9999
}'''
01000000017b1eabe0209b1fe794124575ef807057c77ada2138ae4fa8d6c4de
0398a14f3f0000000000ffffffff01f0ca052a010000001976a914cbc20a7664
f2f69e5355aa427045bc15e7c6c77288ac00000000

[harding]

@royalfork thanks for the report!

It looks like your shell is passing a single quote (') into the JSON. I used the bash shell on Linux to write the tutorial; may I ask what shell you're using? I just quickly tested the ash, tcsh, fish, and zsh shells, and all of them seem to work except tcsh (but I get a different error than you got).

You may want to try replacing series of three single quotes (''') with just one single quote ('). On bash, odd number of quotes in a row always act the same, so I used three quotes to delineate a code block---but just one single-quote should act the same.

If that doesn't work, then maybe try putting everything on the same line. This is what gets done in normal practice when formatting for publication isn't a concern. For example, here is the command you tried to run on one line:

bitcoin-cli -regtest createrawtransaction '[{ "txid": "0b95cf0e1b6c9579e53ae147a497c49e635091f53aa996e7e27c87fce388cd0e", "vout": 0 }]' '{ "mrhvdMRRcBeapkyrHjiYrCZQJSzwPXvLXw": 49.9999 }'

When we get this all sorted out, I'll update the introduction to the instructions with information to help others avoid this problem. Thanks!

[harding]

@royalfork I haven't heard back from you in a number of days, so I'm going to close this issue as I can't reproduce your error condition. If you have any more information to add after reading my reply above, please feel free to re-open this issue. Thanks!

[Hiblet]

I had the same issue in the DOS shell (boo! hiss!), eventually it came down to removing single quotes, and escaping double quotes... bitcoin-cli -regtest createrawtransaction [{"txid":"c6343009c5d73572f750359480ae95170a00cfb41063f8cd70e1c14d06e8776c","vout":0}] {"myf8U7KUzidun3WzjK2WM4nYVyE1ZkpSGH":49.9999}