Bash scripting line wrapping best practices

kushalkoolwal · 07-20-2011, 12:19 PM

I have a bash script which has long (more than 80 cols) statements like these:

Code:

.....
GNOME_PANEL_ROOT_SETTINGS="$BSP_FILES_LOC_FULL/gnome-panel/gnome-panel-root.entries"
.....
if [[ $BSP_TYPE == "essential" || $BSP_TYPE == "full" || $BSP_TYPE == "livecd" || $QSP_TYPE == "dummy" ]]
.....
echo "The argument 'dummy' is always used with second argument. Please provide an appropriate second argument."

I deliberately picked the above statements which shows three different types of scenario -- Variable declaration, IF statement and a echo statement.

Now, I know I can shorten the length of the above by choosing a different variable or reformatting the sentence but that this is not the point because there can always be a scenario where you have used everything that is ideal but your line still goes beyond 80 cols.

So the question: What is the best way to get the above lines under 80 cols?

I usually use gedit or nano for writing scripts.

grail · 07-20-2011, 12:46 PM

Well I do not know of any hard and fast rule that says 80 has to be the limit, but escaping the end of the line should work well.
After that I guess it comes to personal preference. I would probably leave the variable assignment.

Code:

.....
GNOME_PANEL_ROOT_SETTINGS="$BSP_FILES_LOC_FULL/gnome-panel/gnome-panel-root.ent\
ries"
.....
if [[ $BSP_TYPE == "essential" ||    \
      $BSP_TYPE == "full"      ||    \
      $BSP_TYPE == "livecd"    ||    \
      $QSP_TYPE == "dummy"     ]]
.....
echo "The argument 'dummy' is always used with second argument. Please provide \
an appropriate second argument."

kushalkoolwal · 07-20-2011, 01:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by grail

Code:

if [[ $BSP_TYPE == "essential" ||    \
      $BSP_TYPE == "full"      ||    \
      $BSP_TYPE == "livecd"    ||    \
      $QSP_TYPE == "dummy"     ]]

What I noticed for the above long IF statement is that if I do it in this way:

Code:

if [[ $BSP_TYPE == "essential" ||
      $BSP_TYPE == "full"      ||
      $BSP_TYPE == "livecd"    ||
      $QSP_TYPE == "dummy"     ]]

i.e. just hit enter key after every variable checking, the script works fine too. What is the difference between the one that I just showed above (and what is it called as?) and the one that you mentioned (escaping the new line with "\").

grail · 07-20-2011, 02:05 PM

Nothing is really different that I am aware of ... it was more to keep it looking the same so you knew if you ever see '\' at the end of the line then the information is continued onto the
next line ... again a personal preference.

bigearsbilly · 07-20-2011, 02:52 PM

I always use here docs and cat for printing long messages,
you can even interpolate commands and variables:

Code:

# redirect to stderr
1>&2 cat <<EOT

oops! failed on $(date)
it didn't work!

path is ${PATH}


EOT

SL00b · 07-20-2011, 03:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kushalkoolwal

What I noticed for the above long IF statement is that if I do it in this way:

Code:

if [[ $BSP_TYPE == "essential" ||
      $BSP_TYPE == "full"      ||
      $BSP_TYPE == "livecd"    ||
      $QSP_TYPE == "dummy"     ]]

i.e. just hit enter key after every variable checking, the script works fine too. What is the difference between the one that I just showed above (and what is it called as?) and the one that you mentioned (escaping the new line with "\").

The short answer is, shell interpreters basically ignore white space, which allows us to code our scripts in a human-friendly fashion. So if you have consecutive spaces (all over the place in both examples), it treats them as one space, and if you have a newline character within a shell construct (the if construct, in this case) then it'll ignore them until it finds the end of the construct.

It does this because the computer doesn't care about aligning columns, but it makes things easier for us.

chrism01 · 07-20-2011, 08:49 PM

One trick with echo if you like it

Code:

echo -n "The argument 'dummy' is always used with second argument."
echo " Please provide an appropriate second argument."

http://linux.die.net/man/1/echo

I generally agree with leaving the var assignment as is, although it may make your code more flexible to assign separate vars to dirs and filenames and concatenate as reqd.

Reuti · 07-21-2011, 07:32 AM

I think there is a difference whether you use \ or not (not only personal taste). In the above statement you have the line breaks at a boundary of a statement, but not inside a statement (I think the if construct might not be finished, but the if on its own is finished while the comparison below isn’t finished). So:

Code:

#!/bin/bash

if [[ $BSP_TYPE == \
       "essential" ||
      $BSP_TYPE == "full"      ||
      $BSP_TYPE == "livecd"    ||
      $QSP_TYPE == "dummy"     ]]; then
    echo yes
fi

will need the \ in the first line.