Check a script’s syntax without executing its body.
Bash Scripts: bash -n parses commands but does not run ordinary script statements.
set -euo pipefail
bash -n candidate.sh
if [[ ! -e marker.txt ]]; then printf "Syntax OK; not executed\n"; fiExpected output EXAMPLE
Syntax OK; not executed
Details
Requires Bash 4 or later. Save as snippet.sh and run bash snippet.sh in an empty working directory. bash -n parses commands but does not run ordinary script statements.
Tested on Ubuntu 24.04.5 LTS · · GNU bash, version 5.2.21(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) · bash 5.2.21-2ubuntu4; coreutils 9.4-3ubuntu6.3
Test inputs, results and environment
The exact published code ran in a dedicated Linux test container with prepared inputs. Snippet process uid 65534 with a read-only root filesystem and temporary working files. Networking disabled. Fixtures and output records are isolated from the application database. Testing covers this example and its stated checks, not every input, operating system, or runtime version. The Linux container shares its host's kernel; this is not a native Windows test.
- Architecture / host kernel
- x86_64 / 6.18.54.1-microsoft-standard-WSL2
- Snippet identity / locale
- uid=65534, gid=65534 (unprivileged process) / C.UTF-8
- Interpreter invocation
bash -euo pipefail -c <published code>- Container image ID
sha256:ec91410a8f6ec3e985830b5e3a0560306d36f8c1c5ccd91a6699abe707123fa3- Code SHA-256
ccc142a8024fd4f8dff6778136df32d6f0ee3daf4ae71b1c9ca7921b1eeaab6c- Dependencies
- bash 5.2.21-2ubuntu4; coreutils 9.4-3ubuntu6.3
Test input setup
These are the prepared inputs used by the test harness. See Details above for the prerequisites and how to run this example.
printf 'touch marker.txt\n' > candidate.sh
Observed standard output
Syntax OK; not executed
Exit code: 0. Standard error: empty. Validation: Exact stdout comparison. System-dependent values above are one recorded run.
Additional assertions that passed
Checks recorded by the test harness. Where Python assertions are shown, browser cases use Playwright and simulator cases may inspect pin transitions: result.stdout is captured output, work is the temporary directory, and Path is pathlib.Path. The harness also imports json and csv.
assert not Path('marker.txt').exists()