Tag shell

I used to write a lot of shell scripts before realising that what I was trying to do was treat shell scripting as a "full" scripting language (I won't define here what I mean by "full").

Its not - reach for a higher level scripting language like Ruby or Python when things are getting more complicated, and allow shell scripts to glue things together, or be for quick tasks maybe a few lines long.

When you do write them, this advice is great but it's definitely worth gaining understanding of when you should and shouldn't use them.

This is a great article about how to be safer when writing shell scripts. I am a huge proponent of not using them where possible, and instead moving them to another scripting language (Ruby, Python, Node) which you can test, and use a shared standard library.

A sneaky and interesting way to trick someone into running a fork bomb, even if they know it may be one!

In every programming language, there is a linting tool that can help pick up on some common style issues. ShellCheck isn't one of those - it's so much more!

I've been using it for many years now, and since it came into my life it's honestly changed the way I use shell scripts. There have been so many pitfalls that I've avoided falling into since learning about them (and adding ShellCheck to my Vim linting setup.

This is a great read from Vidar, the ShellCheck author, about a case where it could've caught issues that caused the deletion of a production database!