6 TECHNIQUES I USE TO CREATE A GREAT USER EXPERIENCE FOR SHELL SCRIPTS

Summary from the TLDR InfoSec newsletter

This author wrote a script that was praised for its UX to automate the evaluation steps in a competition. They argue for comprehensive error handling and input validation with detailed and actionable error messages, clear and colorful output, detailed progress reporting without overwhelming the user by using set -x, using set -x and set +x for fine grained and strategic error handling, making use of platform specific functionality, and using time stamped file outputs to make multiple runs easier to compare. Examples of each of these principles are included in the post.