Techniques Hacker News Uses to Create Great Shell Scripts
a year ago
- #developer-tools
- #bash
- #shell-scripting
- Make scripts interoperable and pipeline friendly by using #!/usr/bin/env bash, tput for portable color output, respecting $NO_COLOR, and outputting status messages to stderr.
- Use printf instead of echo for more consistent behavior across different systems.
- Utilize shellcheck to identify and fix common issues in shell scripts.
- Understand the differences between double brackets [[]] and single brackets [] in Bash, with double brackets offering more features and safety.
- Follow the convention of using exit code 2 for command line syntax errors.
- Leverage bash boilerplates like bash3boilerplate to provide a solid foundation for scripts.