After all it is such a handy language we use every day, often do not realize the power on our fingertips. I list here five tips which may save you a lot of code and improve it's quality and sexiness.
by 
Sometimes we ask the user to enter a path for the base directory on which we either build some path tree or look for executable. In this situation we can never know either user enters slash at the end of the path or not. Either way, this is really common problem, and often you can see different workarounds. Bash lets you handle this problem with merely one line of code.
E_NOARGS=86
E_BADARG=87
USR_PATH=$1 # => '~/go/'
USR_PATH="${USR_PATH%/}/" # => '~/go/' (same as if the input was '~/go')
if [ -d "${USR_PATH}" ]; then
SRC=${USR_PATH}src/ # => '~/go/src/'
BIN=${USR_PATH}bin/ # => '~/go/bin/'
PKG=${USR_PATH}pkg/ # => '~/go/pkg/'
if [ -d ${SRC} ] && [ -d ${BIN} ] && [ -d ${PKG} ]; then
echo "${USR_PATH} is a proper GOPATH repository."
else
exit E_BADARG
fi
else
exit E_NOARGS
fi
# ...
You probably know that one can send data to /dev/null when the output is not significant.
mv * ./src 2> /dev/null
But did you know that the reverse (sending /dev/null output to the file) works as well ? In result we get an easy mechanism to clear logs and releasing some computation data. There is however shorter syntax for doing just that.
cat /dev/null > computation.log
: > computation.log # Same as above
> computation.log # Still same behavior
This one is fairly simple solution, yet somebody may try to reinvent the wheel and manually check the $PATH. Luckily the type command with -p argument is returning either the path string (which evaluates to true in conditional expression) or nothing (which evaluates to false).
dep=java
if ! `type -p ${dep} > /dev/null`; then
echo "Sorry, you need ${dep} to run my app."
exit 1;
fi
The way to extract a variable to a child process, that most programmers stick to, is the export method. Local scope is often handled by the local keyword which delimiters a variable only to the local process. Also you can merely see bash scripts which are using constants. Well, there is only one keyword you need to remember, giving a solution to all of above problems and more, it is quite like panacea for bash variable manipulation. Creating a variable simply using the declare is restricting it to the given scope, causing closure effect. Useful to remember is also: -x for export, -r (read-only) for constants, -a for array, -i for integers (behaves similar to let but with further scope restriction, see the example).
foo () {
local let x=10/2
declare -i -r y=10/2 # => 5
}
access () {
foo
echo $x # => 5
echo $y # => (nothing)
}
This is powerful concept that often seems to be misunderstood. Those are kind-of anonymous blocks of code. The block evaluation output can be plugged in to a command. Command substitutions can be also assigned to a variable for later use. For an simple example, sending ls -ltr trough the command substitution will result in a nice formatted ls output echoed to stdin.
echo "$(ls -ltr)" # You need to escape the command substitution
# with quote, otherwise echo will eat newlines.
The wide used syntax for creating an command substitution is trough the backticks `...`. Hover the $(...) has superseded the backticks syntax as it comes with few benefits, one of which is nesting command substitutions. Let's try actually something fun, like signing a loop to a variable.
names=( 'Alice' 'Bob' 'Charlie')
listNames=$(for i in $(seq 0 $(expr ${#names[@]} - 1)); do
declare -i index=${i}+1
echo -n "${index}.${names[${i}]} "
done)
names=( 'Dave' 'Erin' 'Frank')
echo "Participants: ${listNames}" # => Participants: 1.Alice 2.Bob 3.Charlie
Command substitution is ideal tool for expending bash tool-set. You can plug outside scripts, programs written in any language, or assign a code from a file very easily.
fork_c=$(itoa 77) # Now $fork_c will execute the c program from
# ./ directory. You can test it by downloading
# a C code snippet from:
# https://paste.debian.net/1041904/
# Then compile it to the directory where your
# script lives:
# gcc -std=c99 itoa.c -o itoa
file_definition=$(<itoa.c) # Get content of the 'itoa' source code
self_definition=$(<$0) # Save the content of the scripts itself
Notice from ABS Guide: "Do not set a variable to the contents of a long text file unless you have a very good reason for doing so. Do not set a variable to the contents of a binary file, even as a joke." (bit=$(<itoa) << do not dare!)
Order is crucial to avoid needless complexity. I hope you now say to yourself, "Wow this dude have style" and then you stick with this thought any time you write bash again but where the 'dude' will be you this time :).