T-DOSE 2024

Using higher-order functions for maintainable Bash scripting
06-01, 15:00–15:50 (Europe/Brussels), Katoenkamer (0.37)

Novice scripters may overlook the power of functions to make scripts more maintainable.
We can take this power up a notch by making functions take functions as arguments.

We will look at a Bash script that underwent this transformation while acquiring new features, and discuss the pros and cons of this approach. Would you do the same thing? Would you recommend it?

The presenter has been writing small programs in many different languages since 1982, most of that time in IT-related roles at Eindhoven University of Technology. He grew a C# application to 105,000 lines and spent some years looking at other people's code as a software quality consultant. In his present job, servicing Linux servers, the languages he spends the most time with are Ansible, Python, Bash, jq, PHP, and Perl.