Shellcheck

Shellcheck

Shellcheck is a static analysis tool for shell scripts that helps identify bugs and improve code quality. It checks for syntax errors, potential bugs, bad practices, and style issues, and provides helpful warnings and suggestions.
Shellcheck image
shell bash static-analysis linter

Shellcheck: Static Analysis Tool for Shell Scripts

Shellcheck is a static analysis tool for shell scripts that helps identify bugs and improve code quality. It checks for syntax errors, potential bugs, bad practices, and style issues, and provides helpful warnings and suggestions.

What is Shellcheck?

Shellcheck is an open source static analysis and linting tool for shell scripts. It can analyze scripts written in Bash, Dash, ksh, and other shell languages. Shellcheck will analyze a script to identify common bugs and errors such as:

  • Syntax errors
  • Unused variables
  • Parameter expansion issues
  • Race conditions
  • Security issues
  • Portability problems

Some key features and benefits of Shellcheck include:

  • Catches many beginner and expert-level issues
  • Supports bash/sh/ksh/dash/other POSIX shells
  • Extensive documentation explaining each warning
  • Can be integrated into text editors and IDEs
  • Can be run from the command line or used as a web service
  • Free and open source (licensed under GPLv3)

Overall, Shellcheck is considered an invaluable tool for writing safer and more robust shell scripts that conform to best practices. By integrating it early into a developer's workflow, many potential bugs and problems can be caught quickly before resulting in failures or security issues down the line.

Shellcheck Features

Features

  1. Syntax checking
  2. Bug detection
  3. Security issue identification
  4. Style and formatting suggestions
  5. Portability warnings
  6. Support for bash/sh and POSIX shells

Pricing

  • Open Source

Pros

Free and open source

Easy integration into development workflows

Helps improve script robustness and readability

Active development and maintenance

Large user community

Cons

Can generate false positives

Limited to shell scripts (no support for other languages)

Requires some manual review of warnings

Not all features work on all shell versions


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