At work, I write a lot of scripts to automate commands , like Dockerfile, GitLab CI, or just a group of commands for a specific task. In my scripts, I like to add a lot of comments to indicate what the command does or why. Sometimes I even add comments between its arguments , as some of them may not be clear. ๐ฅด
These comments may be obvious for experienced developers, but I think it can helps readers, as they might not have the same knowledge. It might even be myself in a few months or years, as I regularly switch from one language to another, depending on the project I am working on.
Unfortunately, the comments between the arguments of a multiline command differ from a shell to shell. So sometimes, I find myself looking for an example in a previous projet to comment the commands of the script I am writing. ๐
To facilitate the development of my future scripts, I decided to write this little post as my personal memo. ๐
I hope this helps you write better scripts as well! Enjoy! ๐
Bash
- Normal comments:
# Comment - Comments between arguments:
# Comment
# Downloads the package lists from the repositories and updates them
apt-get update \
# Install the following dependencies with the specified versions
# To check if the versions are up to date: https://packages.debian.org/search?suite=buster&keywords=wget
&& apt-get install --no-install-recommends --no-install-suggests -y \
locales=2.28-10 `# To be able to change the language` \
unzip=6.0-23+deb10u2 `# To be able to unzip the source files` \
wget=1.20.1-1.1 `# To be able to obtain the source files`
PowerShell
Excerpt taken from my Lint PowerShell scripts with PSScriptAnalyzer post.
- Normal comments:
# Comment - Comments between arguments:
<# Comment #>
# Sets values for a registered module repository
Set-PSRepository \
-ErrorAction Stop <# Action to take if a command fails #> \
-InstallationPolicy Trusted <# Installation policy (Trusted, Untrusted) #> \
-Name PSGallery <# Name of the repository #> \
-Verbose; <# Write verbose output #>
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