Backtick command substitution `...` is legacy syntax with several issues.

It has a series of undefined behaviors related to quoting in POSIX.

It imposes a custom escaping mode with surprising results.

It's exceptionally hard to nest.

$(...) command substitution has none of these problems, and is therefore strongly encouraged.

[–] confusedpuppy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Shellcheck is a great tool for scripting.

When I'm building a new script, I usually add the following function to the script and run the function before anything else. The script will exit immediately if any issues are found so I have a chance to correct things. If no issues are found, the script will simply continue.

It's small and simple so it's easy to remove when I'm done building a script.

script_check() {
    if ! shellcheck "${0}"; then
        exit 1
    fi
}

script_check

Shellcheck has helped me learn a lot about scripting and I strongly recommend using it too.

[–] IanTwenty@piefed.social 5 points 1 day ago

That's good. There are also editors that can run it for you and highlight the issues whilst you type, neovim being one.

[–] nous@programming.dev 3 points 1 day ago

Why wrap it in a function at all? Why not just put the if at the top of the file?