Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Shell scripting
Raised as a usability problem by 25 people on Hacker News over 14 years (2013–2026), in 25 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Filenames with spaces and error handling are hard to get rightUnreviewed
20132026- Whitespace handling is unintuitive and unpredictable, causing many shell scripting problems2023-07-30
- Shell syntax is awkward, and error handling and filenames with spaces are hard to get right2022-04-24
- Easy to break scripts on filenames with spaces or special characters2015-01-30
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 25 complaints
- Writing shell scripts to orchestrate things is a painful, annoying experience2026-05-21
- Shell scripts accidentally delete home directory when a variable is unset2025-02-10
- Nested strings require careful quote planning, easy to get wrong2024-11-02
- Floods the terminal with irrelevant output and colours, burying what matters2024-09-14
- Whitespace handling is unintuitive and unpredictable, causing many shell scripting problems2023-07-30
- Shell is so persnickety that scripting tasks were dreaded2023-06-05
- Error handling built for interactive use makes shell scripts easy to get wrong2022-04-26
- Shell syntax is awkward, and error handling and filenames with spaces are hard to get right2022-04-24
- Error says argument list too long when environment variables are the real cause2022-04-13
- Script without shebang hangs with a crosshair cursor, unclear why2022-04-07
- Hard to learn: lack of discoverability, inconsistent flags, esoteric syntax, poor error feedback2022-03-24
- Shell implementations and tool versions differ subtly, making scripts hard to make work everywhere2021-12-13
- Shell scripting is hard to write well; commenter finds it poor for anything beyond short scripts2021-11-25
- Confusing shell behavior: hard to exit whole script from a function2021-05-10
- Unexpected splitting and wildcard expansion make simple shell operations error-prone2020-09-28
- Exit code 0 means success, inverting the usual true/false meaning and confusing users2020-08-25
- Shell control-flow idioms like "|| true" are hard to remember and reimplemented unnecessarily2020-08-23
- Suppressed error message hides that brew is missing, causing later confusing failure2019-10-17
- Shell has strange, dangerous behaviors and special syntax that cause bugs2019-03-17
- Too many confusing syntax options to test if a string is empty, easy to get wrong2018-12-28
- Easy to break scripts on filenames with spaces or special characters2015-01-30
- Innocent-looking commands behave differently across OSes, so portable scripts are hard to write2014-03-15
- Shell scripting landscape is confusing, deterring the commenter from learning it2013-12-07
- Shell script syntax is hard to remember and less intuitive than other languages2013-11-18
- Custom aliases don't exist on other machines, so shortcuts break when logging into new ones2013-10-09