Hacker News with Generative AI: Shell Scripting

Bash-ini-parser: Advanced bash INI parser library (github.com/lsferreira42)
A robust shell script library for parsing and manipulating INI configuration files in Bash.
Bash, Shell Scripting, Configuration Files, Libraries
4 points by lsferreira42 2 days ago | 0 comments
Self-contained Python scripts with uv (dusktreader.dev)
You can add uv into the shebang line for a Python script to make it a self-contained executable.
Python, Programming, Operating Systems, Shell Scripting, Executable Files
353 points by todsacerdoti 4 days ago | 107 comments
Safe Shell String Interpolation (samwing.dev)
Let's take the toy problem of getting the user's name and printing out a rainbow greeting banner. An inexperienced developer might solve the problem like this:
Security, Programming, Software Development, Shell Scripting, Best Practices
21 points by Wingy 11 days ago | 7 comments
A 6502 emulator written in busybox ash (treehouse.systems)
Emulators, Programming, Shell Scripting, 6502
10 points by todsacerdoti 17 days ago | 0 comments
Xdg-ninja: checking your $HOME for unwanted files and directories (github.com/b3nj5m1n)
A shell script that checks your $HOME for unwanted files and directories.
Shell Scripting, System Optimization, Linux
74 points by plushugh 28 days ago | 29 comments
How to add a note above your files when running `ls` (github.com/gkamer8)
How to create an alias of `ls` that displays a .note file, if it exists.
Linux, Command Line, Shell Scripting, Productivity
7 points by gkamer8 30 days ago | 4 comments
I shouldn't of made this. Another direnv alternative for no reason (willwa.de)
I hate having to do this. But I have.
Software, Development Tools, Shell Scripting
10 points by willwade 44 days ago | 12 comments
Prefer tee -a, not >>, in CI (huonw.github.io)
Shell scripts sometimes have to append data to a file. Redirecting output with >> is the conventional way and works fine, but using tee -a instead is a usually better default, especially in continuous integration. It’s just as easy and gives automatic introspection: the same value is printed to stdout and so appears in normal logs too.
Shell Scripting, Continuous Integration, DevOps, Software Development, Best Practices
4 points by dbaupp 49 days ago | 0 comments
Shell-ish scripting in Go with ease (github.com/bitfield)
script is a Go library for doing the kind of tasks that shell scripts are good at: reading files, executing subprocesses, counting lines, matching strings, and so on.
Go Programming, Shell Scripting, Programming Tools, Software Libraries
140 points by begoon 61 days ago | 65 comments
Find the oldest line in your repo (milofultz.com)
This is how all my projects go. I get a wild hare and then figure out how I can make a shell script to do it. Thanks to some help from people online, I was able to make a script that listed out the oldest lines in a git repo. Kind of fun to see what legacy stuff is still around.
Programming, Git, Shell Scripting
63 points by surprisetalk 66 days ago | 58 comments
Today I learned that bash has hashmaps (2024) (xeiaso.net)
Hashmaps (associative arrays) are a great way to store a bag of key-value data. At work I was writing something that needed me to spawn a bunch of GPU instances, GPU availability is spread out by region and GPU type. I wanted to store a mapping of GPU kind to region name and for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to do it in bash.
Bash, Programming, Shell Scripting, Data Structures
177 points by stefankuehnel 85 days ago | 133 comments
Fish 4.0: The Fish of Theseus (fishshell.com)
About two years ago, our head maintainer @ridiculousfish opened what quickly became our most-read pull request:
Software, Open Source, Programming Languages, Shell Scripting
906 points by jdxcode 95 days ago | 197 comments
Populating env vars using 1Password (coryd.dev)
I love automating things and — with that impulse entirely unchecked — I've written up a shell script to make setting this site up for local development even simpler.
Automation, Development, Shell Scripting, 1Password
7 points by cdme 109 days ago | 0 comments
Biggest shell programs (github.com/oils-for-unix)
Programming, Shell Scripting, Unix
259 points by todsacerdoti 117 days ago | 123 comments
TIL: Some surprising code execution sources in bash (yossarian.net)
I ran across two surprising sources of code execution in bash (and probably other shells) recently.
Security, Bash, Shell Scripting
6 points by todsacerdoti 133 days ago | 0 comments
A Second Search for Bash Scripting Alternatives (monzool.net)
SHELL SCRIPTING IS something most programmers will encounter often – especially if doing dev-ops, automation and general Linux work. Unfortunately we are mostly stuck with bash. There surely must be better alternatives…
Bash Scripting, Shell Scripting, Programming, Automation, Linux
21 points by thunderbong 135 days ago | 49 comments
Resolving a mysterious problem with find (johndcook.com)
Suppose you want to write a shell script searches the current directory for files that have a keyword in the name of the file or in its contents. Here’s a first attempt.
Shell Scripting, Linux, Programming, File System
33 points by chmaynard 141 days ago | 45 comments
Yosild: A single shell script that builds a full, minimal Linux distribution (jm.iq.pl)
Yosild is a single shell script that builds a full, minimal Linux distribution, based on BusyBox. It compiles the latest stable kernel and the latest stable version of the BusyBox. This script can prepare minimalistic Linux system for devices with little hardware resources. Yosild Linux needs just 70 MB RAM and 40 MB storage size. yosild.sh requires minimal Debian or Ubuntu distro to run with the architecture compatible with the target device.
Linux, Operating Systems, Shell Scripting, Minimalism
40 points by ocean_moist 146 days ago | 0 comments
Learn Awk in Y Minutes (learnxinyminutes.com)
AWK is a standard tool on every POSIX-compliant UNIX system. It’s like flex/lex, from the command-line, perfect for text-processing tasks and other scripting needs. It has a C-like syntax, but without mandatory semicolons (although, you should use them anyway, because they are required when you’re writing one-liners, something AWK excels at), manual memory management, or static typing. It excels at text processing. You can call to it from a shell script, or you can use it as a stand-alone scripting language.
Programming Languages, Shell Scripting, Text Processing
12 points by sandwichsphinx 149 days ago | 5 comments
85% of Cursor AI in a Shell Script and Good Prompting (rohan.ga)
This is an example workflow of how to integrate LLMs into your software dev.
Software Development, Artificial Intelligence, Shell Scripting
4 points by ocean_moist 162 days ago | 0 comments
NGS – Next Generation Shell (ngs-lang.org)
Next Generation Shell is a modern programming language that focuses on "DevOps"y use cases.
Programming Languages, DevOps, Shell Scripting
15 points by gurjeet 165 days ago | 4 comments
Abuse ZSH Parameter Expansion to Expand GNU-Style Arguments (blogspot.com)
This method offers exactly one benefit: the target platform I was working with for this project was mingw under Windows and, like WSL1, it had this very painful performance issue when a shell had to create a sub-shell -- basically, any time you $(run something) and that means "if your function returns anything except for an integer", it's going to have a serious cost to place that into a variable the convenient way.
Shell Scripting, ZSH, Performance Optimization, Windows, Linux
26 points by mdip 178 days ago | 3 comments
Whence '\n'? (rodarmor.com)
If you do just foo, the following justfile will write a single byte 0x0A to a file named bar:
Programming, Shell Scripting, File Handling
338 points by lukastyrychtr 180 days ago | 128 comments
A Tour of Hell – Shell scripting Haskell dialect (chrisdone.com)
This set of slides sketches out the implementation of Hell, in technical detail. I do tend to switch between the slides, old code, and the present code, so bear with me. It's more about the ideas. If you want to see a complete implementation, the complete implementation of Hell is one file, which you can look through easily.
Programming, Haskell, Shell Scripting
139 points by kreyenborgi 185 days ago | 23 comments
What was the point of [ "x$var" = "xval" ]? (2021) (vidarholen.net)
In shell scripting you sometimes come across comparisons where each value is prefixed with "x". Here are some examples from GitHub:
Shell Scripting, Programming, Code Analysis, Best Practices
82 points by fanf2 186 days ago | 49 comments
OpenBSD now enforcing no invalid NUL characters in shell scripts (undeadly.org)
Security, OpenBSD, Shell Scripting
185 points by CTOSian 190 days ago | 154 comments
The Dune Shell (adam-mcdaniel.github.io)
Dune is a shell designed for powerful scripting. Think of it as an unholy combination of bash and Lisp.
Shell Scripting, Programming Languages, Open Source, Command Line
240 points by thunderbong 199 days ago | 82 comments
Techniques I use to create a great user experience for shell scripts (nochlin.com)
"You should go and check out the shell script in the repo because it's very nice. It has colored output, it's super safe... it's really a masterclass in terms of writing shell scripts."
Shell Scripting, User Experience, Programming, Best Practices
412 points by hundredwatt 203 days ago | 273 comments
Show HN: Awk Version Comparison Dashboard (megamansec.github.io)
Programming, Tools, Shell Scripting
4 points by mmsc 216 days ago | 0 comments
Show HN: Ward – a file vault written in bash (github.com/oeo)
Security, Shell Scripting, Command Line, Open Source, File Management
20 points by genesishash 220 days ago | 11 comments