I'm being flippant, because shell scripts are so inherently error prone they're to be avoided for critical stuff like this. If you _absolutely_ must use a shel

I'm being flippant, because shell scripts are so inherently error prone they're to be avoided for critical stuff like this. If you _absolutely_ must use a shell script: 0. Use shellcheck, which will warn you about many of the below issues: https://www.shellcheck.net/ https://www.shellcheck.net/ 1. understand how quoting and word splitting work: https://mywiki.wooledge.org/Quotes https://mywiki.wooledge.org/Quotes 2. if piping files to other programs, using `-print0` or equivalent (or even better, if using something like find, its built in execution options): https://mywiki.wooledge.org/UsingFind https://mywiki.wooledge.org/UsingFind 3. Beware the pitfalls (especially something like parsing `ls`): https://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashPitfalls https://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashPitfalls (warning: the community around that wiki can be pretty toxic, just keep that in mind when foraying into it.)