Error Minting Native Asset: " unexpected '.', expecting space, letter or digit, white space, "+" or end of input "

Question

I am writing a script to automate minting native assets. Everything works well, up until this point:

echo "Building transaction..."
cardano-cli transaction build \
            --babbage-era \
            $NETWORK \
            --tx-in $txhash#$txix \
            --tx-out $address+$output+"$tokenamount $policyid.$tokenhash" \
            --mint "$tokenamount $policyid.$tokenhash" \
            --minting-script-file "$tokenname"/policy/policy.script \
            --change-address $address \
            --out-file "$tokenname"/tx.build;

but every time I run the script, I get this error for "--tx-out":

Building transaction...
option --tx-out: 
unexpected '.'
expecting space, letter or digit, white space, "+" or end of input

I followed the official Cardano documentation for how to format the command, but for some reason the 'dot' between $policyid and $tokenhash is giving issues.

Is there something I'm missing? I know the documentation can be notoriously out of date, but nothing I've found online and elsewhere has helped so far.