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ShellCheck - A shell script static analysis tool

ShellCheck is a GPLv3 tool that gives warnings and suggestions for bash/sh shell scripts:

Screenshot of a terminal showing problematic shell script lines highlighted.

The goals of ShellCheck are

  • To point out and clarify typical beginner's syntax issues that causes a shell to give cryptic error messages.

  • To point out and clarify typical intermediate level semantic problems that causes a shell to behave strangely and counter-intuitively.

  • To point out subtle caveats, corner cases and pitfalls that may cause an advanced user's otherwise working script to fail under future circumstances.

See the gallery of bad code for examples of what ShellCheck can help you identify!

How to use

There are a variety of ways to use ShellCheck!

On the web

Paste a shell script on http://www.shellcheck.net for instant feedback.

ShellCheck.net is always synchronized to the latest git commit, and is the simplest way to give ShellCheck a go. Tell your friends!

From your terminal

Run shellcheck yourscript in your terminal for instant output, as seen above.

In your editor

You can see ShellCheck suggestions directly in a variety of editors.

Screenshot of vim showing inlined shellcheck feedback.

Screenshot of emacs showing inlined shellcheck feedback.

In your build or test suites

While ShellCheck is mostly intended for interactive use, it can easily be added to builds or test suites.

Use ShellCheck's exit code, or it's CheckStyle compatible XML output. There's also a simple JSON output format for easy integration.

Installing

The easiest way to install ShellCheck locally is through your package manager.

On systems with Cabal (installs to ~/.cabal/bin):

cabal update cabal install shellcheck 

On Debian based distros:

apt-get install shellcheck 

On Fedora based distros:

dnf install ShellCheck 

On OS X with homebrew:

brew install shellcheck 

On OS X with MacPorts:

port install shellcheck 

On openSUSE:Tumbleweed:

zypper in ShellCheck 

On other openSUSE distributions:

add OBS devel:languages:haskell repository from https://build.opensuse.org/project/repositories/devel:languages:haskell

zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/languages:/haskell/openSUSE_$(version)/devel:languages:haskell.repo zypper in ShellCheck 

or use OneClickInstall - https://software.opensuse.org/package/ShellCheck

Compiling from source

This sections describes how to build ShellCheck from a source directory. ShellCheck is written in Haskell and requires 2GB of RAM to compile.

Installing Cabal

ShellCheck is built and packaged using Cabal. Install the package cabal-install from your system's package manager (with e.g. apt-get, yum, zypper or brew).

On MacPorts, the package is instead called hs-cabal-install, while native Windows users should install the latest version of the Haskell platform from https://www.haskell.org/platform/

Verify that cabal is installed and update its dependency list with

$ cabal update 

Compiling ShellCheck

git clone this repository, and cd to the ShellCheck source directory to build/install:

$ cabal install 

This will compile ShellCheck and install it to your ~/.cabal/bin directory.

Add this directory to your PATH (for bash, add this to your ~/.bashrc):

export PATH="$HOME/.cabal/bin:$PATH" 

Log out and in again, and verify that your PATH is set up correctly:

$ which shellcheck ~/.cabal/bin/shellcheck 

On native Windows, the PATH should already be set up, but the system may use a legacy codepage. In cmd.exe, powershell.exe and Powershell ISE, make sure to use a TrueType font, not a Raster font, and set the active codepage to UTF-8 (65001) with chcp:

> chcp 65001 Active code page: 65001 

In Powershell ISE, you may need to additionally update the output encoding:

> [Console]::OutputEncoding = [System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8 

Running tests

To run the unit test suite:

$ cabal test 

Gallery of bad code

So what kind of things does ShellCheck look for? Here is an incomplete list of detected issues.

Quoting

ShellCheck can recognize several types of incorrect quoting:

echo $1 # Unquoted variables find . -name *.ogg # Unquoted find/grep patterns rm "~/my file.txt" # Quoted tilde expansion v='--verbose="true"'; cmd $v # Literal quotes in variables for f in "*.ogg" # Incorrectly quoted 'for' loops touch $@ # Unquoted $@ echo 'Don't forget to restart!' # Singlequote closed by apostrophe echo 'Don\'t try this at home' # Attempting to escape ' in '' echo 'Path is $PATH' # Variables in single quotes trap "echo Took ${SECONDS}s" 0 # Prematurely expanded trap 

Conditionals

ShellCheck can recognize many types of incorrect test statements.

[[ n != 0 ]] # Constant test expressions [[ -e *.mpg ]] # Existence checks of globs [[ $foo==0 ]] # Always true due to missing spaces [[ -n "$foo " ]] # Always true due to literals [[ $foo =~ "fo+" ]] # Quoted regex in =~ [ foo =~ re ] # Unsupported [ ] operators [ $1 -eq "shellcheck" ] # Numerical comparison of strings [ $n && $m ] # && in [ .. ] [ grep -q foo file ] # Command without $(..) 

Frequently misused commands

ShellCheck can recognize instances where commands are used incorrectly:

grep '*foo*' file # Globs in regex contexts find . -exec foo {} && bar {} \; # Prematurely terminated find -exec sudo echo 'Var=42' > /etc/profile # Redirecting sudo time --format=%s sleep 10 # Passing time(1) flags to time builtin while read h; do ssh "$h" uptime # Commands eating while loop input alias archive='mv $1 /backup' # Defining aliases with arguments tr -cd '[a-zA-Z0-9]' # [] around ranges in tr exec foo; echo "Done!" # Misused 'exec' find -name \*.bak -o -name \*~ -delete # Implicit precedence in find f() { whoami; }; sudo f # External use of internal functions 

Common beginner's mistakes

ShellCheck recognizes many common beginner's syntax errors:

var = 42 # Spaces around = in assignments $foo=42 # $ in assignments for $var in *; do ... # $ in for loop variables var$n="Hello" # Wrong indirect assignment echo ${var$n} # Wrong indirect reference var=(1, 2, 3) # Comma separated arrays echo "Argument 10 is $10" # Positional parameter misreference if $(myfunction); then ..; fi # Wrapping commands in $() else if othercondition; then .. # Using 'else if' 

Style

ShellCheck can make suggestions to improve style:

[[ -z $(find /tmp | grep mpg) ]] # Use grep -q instead a >> log; b >> log; c >> log # Use a redirection block instead echo "The time is `date`" # Use $() instead cd dir; process *; cd ..; # Use subshells instead echo $[1+2] # Use standard $((..)) instead of old $[] echo $(($RANDOM % 6)) # Don't use $ on variables in $((..)) echo "$(date)" # Useless use of echo cat file | grep foo # Useless use of cat 

Data and typing errors

ShellCheck can recognize issues related to data and typing:

args="$@" # Assigning arrays to strings files=(foo bar); echo "$files" # Referencing arrays as strings printf "%s\n" "Arguments: $@." # Concatenating strings and arrays. [[ $# > 2 ]] # Comparing numbers as strings var=World; echo "Hello " var # Unused lowercase variables echo "Hello $name" # Unassigned lowercase variables cmd | read bar; echo $bar # Assignments in subshells 

Robustness

ShellCheck can make suggestions for improving the robustness of a script:

rm -rf "$STEAMROOT/"* # Catastrophic rm touch ./-l; ls * # Globs that could become options find . -exec sh -c 'a && b {}' \; # Find -exec shell injection printf "Hello $name" # Variables in printf format for f in $(ls *.txt); do # Iterating over ls output export MYVAR=$(cmd) # Masked exit codes 

Portability

ShellCheck will warn when using features not supported by the shebang. For example, if you set the shebang to #!/bin/sh, ShellCheck will warn about portability issues similar to checkbashisms:

echo {1..$n} # Works in ksh, but not bash/dash/sh echo {1..10} # Works in ksh and bash, but not dash/sh echo -n 42 # Works in ksh, bash and dash, undefined in sh trap 'exit 42' sigint # Unportable signal spec cmd &> file # Unportable redirection operator read foo < /dev/tcp/host/22 # Unportable intercepted files foo-bar() { ..; } # Undefined/unsupported function name [ $UID = 0 ] # Variable undefined in dash/sh local var=value # local is undefined in sh 

Miscellaneous

ShellCheck recognizes a menagerie of other issues:

PS1='\e[0;32m\$\e[0m ' # PS1 colors not in \[..\] PATH="$PATH:~/bin" # Literal tilde in $PATH rm “file” # Unicode quotes echo "Hello world" # Carriage return / DOS line endings var=42 echo $var # Expansion of inlined environment #!/bin/bash -x -e # Common shebang errors echo $((n/180*100)) # Unnecessary loss of precision ls *[:digit:].txt # Bad character class globs sed 's/foo/bar/ file > file # Redirecting to input 

Testimonials

At first you're like "shellcheck is awesome" but then you're like "wtf are we still using bash"

Alexander Tarasikov, via Twitter

Reporting bugs

Please use the Github issue tracker for any bugs or feature suggestions:

https://github.com/koalaman/shellcheck/issues

Contributing

Please submit patches to code or documentation as Github pull requests!

Contributions must be licensed under the GNU GPLv3. The contributor retains the copyright.

Copyright

ShellCheck is licensed under the GNU General Public License, v3. A copy of this license is included in the file LICENSE.

Copyright 2012-2015, Vidar 'koala_man' Holen and contributors.

Happy ShellChecking!

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ShellCheck, a static analysis tool for shell scripts

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