Techniques I use to create a great user experience for shell scripts
1–10 of 281 posts
Re: Techniques I use to create a great user experience for shell scripts
#2I don’t remember where I got it, but I have a simple implementation of a command-line spinner that I use keyboard shortcuts to add to most scripts. Has been a huge quality of life improvement but I wish I could just as seamlessly drop in a progress bar (of course, knowing how far along you are is more complex than knowing you’re still chugging along).
Re: Techniques I use to create a great user experience for shell scripts
#3I'd add that if you're going to use color, then you should do the appropriate checks for determining if STDOUT isatty
Re: Techniques I use to create a great user experience for shell scripts
#4I'd add that if you're going to use color, then you should do the appropriate checks for determining if STDOUT isatty
Or $NO_COLOR, per https://no-color.org
Re: Techniques I use to create a great user experience for shell scripts
#5Only one that’s shell specific is 4. The rest can be applied any code written. Good work!
Re: Techniques I use to create a great user experience for shell scripts
#6I don’t remember where I got it, but I have a simple implementation of a command-line spinner that I use keyboard shortcuts to add to most scripts. Has been a huge quality of life improvement but I wish I could just as seamlessly drop in a progress bar (of course, knowing how far along you are is more complex than knowing you’re still chugging along).
can you share it?
Re: Techniques I use to create a great user experience for shell scripts
#7Nicely done. I love everything about this.
Re: Techniques I use to create a great user experience for shell scripts
#8Definitely don't check that a variable is non-empty before running
rm -rf ${VAR}/*
Re: Techniques I use to create a great user experience for shell scripts
#9Definitely don't check that a variable is non-empty before running rm -rf ${VAR}/* That's typically a great experience for shell scripts!
It happens to the best of us
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/3671
Re: Techniques I use to create a great user experience for shell scripts
#10Only one that’s shell specific is 4. The rest can be applied any code written. Good work!
Even 4 can be generalized to "be deliberate about what you do with a failed function call (etc) - does it exit the command? Log/print an error and continue? Get silently ignored? Handled?"