How can I maintain bash functions without brittle escaped newlines?

Question

I have functions like this:

foo() {
    /some/script \
      --opt1=val1 \
      --opt2=val2 \
      --opt3=val3
 }

This is brittle if I take out the last option, or add any new option at any line. The failures are relatively silent, when I re-source the function, meaning I've run these wrong without noticing.

I use these functions by editing .projectrc then re-sourcing. Some of these mistakes lead to errors printed but they are relatively hard to notice. Any discrepancy between type <fcn> and the text in .projectrc should be a problem.

The escaped newlines are brittle and cause problems so I wonder a good alternative that lets me write a function not all on one long line without breaking so readily.

Kilian Foth · Accepted Answer · 2018-05-11 06:10:19Z

2

This has nothing to do specifically with functions - any kind of shell programming that involves long command lines is susceptible.

One helpful practice is to use set -e in your scripts, so that errors don't just spit out an easily missed warning to STDOUT, but stop the script. Another is to add \ to the end of all lines in a long option list, even the last one - it does no harm and makes it a bit easier to edit the option list later.

answered May 11, 2018 at 6:10

Kilian Foth

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