Inline comments for Bash

Question

I d like to be able to comment out a single flag in a one-line command  Bash only seems to have from   till end-of-line comments  I m looking at tricks like   ls -l        amp  amp  -F is turned off  -a  etc   It s ugly  but better than nothing  Is there a better way   The following seems to work  but I m not sure whether it is portable   ls -l    -F is turned off  -a  etc

User · Answer

How about storing it in a variable    extraargs -F ls -l  extraargs -a  etc

User · Answer

Most commands allow args to come in any order   Just move the commented flags to the end of the line   ls -l -a  etc   -F is turned off   Then to turn it back on  just uncomment and remove the text   ls -l -a  etc -F

User · Answer

If you know a variable is empty  you could use it as a comment  Of course if it is not empty it will mess up your command    ls -l   1  -F is turned off  -a  etc    sect  10 2  Parameter Substitution

User · Answer

Here s my solution for inline comments in between multiple piped commands   Example uncommented code          bin sh     cat input txt         grep something         sort -r   Solution for a pipe comment  using a helper function           bin sh     pipe comment             cat -            cat input txt         pipe comment  filter down to lines that contain the word  something          grep something         pipe comment  reverse sort what is left          sort -r   Or if you prefer  here s the same solution without the helper function  but it s a little messier          bin sh     cat input txt         cat -    filter down to lines that contain the word  something          grep something         cat -    reverse sort what is left          sort -r

User · Answer

is a little less ugly  but still not good

User · Answer

I find it easiest  and most readable  to just copy the line and comment out the original version    Old version of ls   ls -l        amp  amp  -F is turned off  -a  etc ls -l -a  etc

User · Answer

My preferred is   Commenting in a Bash script     This will have some overhead  but technically it does answer your question  echo abc   put your comment here         def   another chance for a comment         xyz etc       And for pipelines specifically  there is a cleaner solution with no overhead  echo abc            normal comment OK here      tr a-z A-Z     another normal comment OK here      sort           the pipelines are automatically continued      uniq           final comment       How to put a line comment for a multi-line command

User · Answer

For disabling a part of a command like a  amp  amp  b  I simply created an empty script x which is on path  so I can do things like   mvn install  amp  amp  runProject   when I need to build  and   x mvn install  amp  amp  runProject   when not  using Ctrl   A and Ctrl   E to move to the beginning and end    As noted in comments  another way to do that is Bash built-in   instead of x        Hello world  how are you   amp  amp  echo  Fine   Fine

[bash] Inline comments for Bash?

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