Re: An xtrace variant

[Eli Schwartz]

On 6/28/20 3:19 PM, Dale R. Worley wrote:
> When debugging a shell script, a useful command is:
> 
>     bash -x script-name
> 
> The deficiency of this is that "-x" causes all simple commands in your
> startup files to be echoed as they are executed, and often this output
> is a lot longer than the output from the commands in the script.
> 
> For a long time, I've wanted a variant of -x that only echoed the simple
> commands after bash is done executing the startup files.  I finally did
> a test implementation, naming a new switch "-X".  If it is set at the
> end of the execution of the startup files, then bash sets "-x", which
> causes subsequent simple commands to be echoed.
Why not just run bash -x script-name without the bash -l option and
without $BASH_ENV set?

The first is implicitly true based on your stated command line. The
second doesn't seem like a high bar to set, and it's not exactly default
behavior... if you really do need $BASH_ENV can't you do the set -x at
the end of that file?

-- 
Eli Schwartz
Arch Linux Bug Wrangler and Trusted User

signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature