Shell Script Best Practices

Shell Script Best Practices:

1.Constant variables or environment variables name should be UPPER-CASE

2. Changeable variables name should be lower-case

3. Variables in function should be named “_xxx_xx”, starting with underscore “_” to avoid conflict with global variables

4. Use ${xxx} to reference variable, don’t omit {}

5. Code Indent

6. Shell function

Treat shell function as real function, and avoid to use global variables

Try to put similar functions into a file, and write the test script to do function test

Use return/echo to return integer from function, use echo to return string from function and use exit if you want the program to abort

The function name should be end with “_func”

7. Comments

File header comments should contain description, usage[optional], author, create/change date

Line comments – leading line commends or end line comments

Sections comments: comments for a block code just like line comments

Function comments: should contain description/input parameters/return value

8. Make sure the script can be started under any directory(this means you should not assume you script will be started as ./your-script.sh)

9. Empty string test, using ” to quota variable

10. Script argument check

If your script has less than 3 arguments, you can use argument position to check and get argument

If your script has many options to set, use getopts

11.  Code sequence in shell script: Global variables —> Shell functions –> Main shell script