shell-scripting

Adhering to software patterns lowers the threshold for doing the right thing, even when the quick hack beckons. This is particularly true in shell script handling of options and configuration. Essentially, the top of all scripts should look like this:

The basis of this pattern is simple: never ever change current working directory in your scripts. In fact, never ever assume that you have a working directory unless your command explicitly works from local directory (e.g. find). Consequently, you should never use relative paths in your script unless you got it from the caller; since your script doesn't change working directory, it's fine to just use whatever path the caller handed you.

In my opinion, error handling is the area where shell script clearest shows its age. The idea that the shell will by default ignore that commands signal an error state (i.e. a non-zero exit code) seems very strange when viewed through the lens of modern programming theory. Thus, all scripts should start with this instruction, that tells the shell to care about exit codes:

set -e

Now, the following code will no longer result in tears when /destination does not exist:

One shortcoming of shell scripting is the inability to return anything of significance from a shell script function. Consider: get a function that returns the youngest file in a directory. The basic moving part in this is ls -tr /da/dir | tail -1. Abstracting this to a function seem problematic, given that we cannot return a value. However, functions is very similar to external commands in bash, so you can do this:

functions latest_file() {
  ls -tr "$1" | tail -1
}

... and then simply invoke it thus:

It is often said that no serious development project should ever use shell script.

While it is certainly true that there are some serious shortcomings is the bash strain of shells, this is not to say that these shortcomings cannot be overcome. Like so much else in programming, it is mostly a matter of finding good patterns that contain those shortcomings.