Shell Scripting That Doesn't Suck

The difference between a script that survives and one that eats data is usually three flags:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -euo pipefail

name="${1:-default}"
echo "Running with $name"

• -e stops on error
• -u catches unset variables
• -o pipefail stops pipelines mid-stream

Quote every variable, use [[ ]] instead of [ ], and let ShellCheck be your reviewer. That’s the whole trick.