I have seen so many messy shell scripts in my not so long life, and the reasons are always the same: “I’m the only one to use it”, “It’s meant to be used once”, etc. The problem is that in practice, those scripts are often reused or dug up months or even years later because they solved a problem similar to one you are having now. And when you have to understand a shell script that has been running in production for years and has been written by someone else, you will have to go through the famous “dusting” part i.
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