A (cheap) trick for formatting shell scripts is approximately: wrap script into a shell function source function definition diff defined function against

A (cheap) trick for formatting shell scripts is approximately: wrap script into a shell function source function definition diff defined function against script with something like: { printf 'dummy (){ ' cat script printf "; };\ntype -a dummy\n" } > dummy source dummy > defined rm dummy; unset -f dummy diff script defined Issues include: comments are absent from defined function listing trailing semicolons appear after each shell command / line the first semi in the trailing "; };" may be a syntax error The default function listing format is fairly generic, so personal formatting preferences must be left as an exercise for the reader. MHO: people who insist on specific code formats should provide tools that can convert arbitrary code into their preferred format.