CHANGELOG.md

v0.11.0 - 2025-08-03

Added

• SC2327/SC2328: Warn about capturing the output of redirected commands.
• SC2329: Warn when (non-escaping) functions are never invoked.
• SC2330: Warn about unsupported glob matches with [[ .. ]] in BusyBox.
• SC2331: Suggest using standard -e instead of unary -a in tests.
• SC2332: Warn about [ ! -o opt ] being unconditionally true in Bash.
• SC3062: Warn about bashism [ -o opt ].
• Optional avoid-negated-conditions: suggest replacing [ ! a -eq b ] with [ a -ne b ], and similar for -ge/-lt/=/!=/etc (SC2335).
• Precompiled binaries for Linux riscv64 (linux.riscv64)

Changed

• SC2002 about Useless Use Of Cat is now disabled by default. It can be re-enabled with --enable=useless-use-of-cat or equivalent directive.
• SC2236/SC2237 about replacing [ ! -n .. ] with [ -z ] and vice versa is now optional under avoid-negated-conditions.
• SC2015 about A && B || C no longer triggers when B is a test command.
• SC3012: Do not warn about \< and \> in test/[] as specified in POSIX.1-2024
• Diff output now uses / as path separator on Windows

Fixed

• SC2218 about function use-before-define is now more accurate.
• SC2317 about unreachable commands is now less spammy for nested ones.
• SC2292, optional suggestion for [[ ]], now triggers for Busybox.
• Updates for Bash 5.3, including ${| cmd; } and source -p

Removed

• SC3013: removed since the operators -ot/-nt/-ef are specified in POSIX.1-2024

v0.10.0 - 2024-03-07

Added

• Precompiled binaries for macOS ARM64 (darwin.aarch64)
• Added support for busybox sh
• Added flag --rcfile to specify an rc file by name.
• Added extended-analysis=true directive to enable/disable dataflow analysis (with a corresponding --extended-analysis flag).
• SC2324: Warn when x+=1 appends instead of increments
• SC2325: Warn about multiple !s in dash/sh.
• SC2326: Warn about foo | ! bar in bash/dash/sh.
• SC3012: Warn about lexicographic-compare bashism in test like in [ ]
• SC3013: Warn bashism test _ -op/-nt/-ef _ like in [ ]
• SC3014: Warn bashism test _ == _ like in [ ]
• SC3015: Warn bashism test _ =~ _ like in [ ]
• SC3016: Warn bashism test -v _ like in [ ]
• SC3017: Warn bashism test -a _ like in [ ]

Fixed

• source statements with here docs now work correctly
• "(Array.!): undefined array element" error should no longer occur

v0.9.0 - 2022-12-12

Added

• SC2316: Warn about 'local readonly foo' and similar (thanks, patrickxia!)
• SC2317: Warn about unreachable commands
• SC2318: Warn about backreferences in 'declare x=1 y=$x'
• SC2319/SC2320: Warn when $? refers to echo/printf/[ ]/[[ ]]/test
• SC2321: Suggest removing $((..)) in array[$((idx))]=val
• SC2322: Suggest collapsing double parentheses in arithmetic contexts
• SC2323: Suggest removing wrapping parentheses in a[(x+1)]=val

Fixed

• SC2086: Now uses DFA to make more accurate predictions about values
• SC2086: No longer warns about values declared as integer with declare -i

Changed

• ShellCheck now has a Data Flow Analysis engine to make smarter decisions based on control flow rather than just syntax. Existing checks will gradually start using it, which may cause them to trigger differently (but more accurately).
• Values in directives/shellcheckrc can now be quoted with '' or ""

v0.8.0 - 2021-11-06

Added

• disable=all now conveniently disables all warnings
• external-sources=true directive can be added to .shellcheckrc to make shellcheck behave as if -x was specified.
• Optional check-extra-masked-returns for pointing out commands with suppressed exit codes (SC2312).
• Optional require-double-brackets for recommending [[ ]] (SC2292).
• SC2286-SC2288: Warn when command name ends in a symbol like /.)'"
• SC2289: Warn when command name contains tabs or linefeeds
• SC2291: Warn about repeated unquoted spaces between words in echo
• SC2292: Suggest [[ over [ in Bash/Ksh scripts (optional)
• SC2293/SC2294: Warn when calling eval with arrays
• SC2295: Warn about "${x#$y}" treating $y as a pattern when not quoted
• SC2296-SC2301: Improved warnings for bad parameter expansions
• SC2302/SC2303: Warn about loops over array values when using them as keys
• SC2304-SC2306: Warn about unquoted globs in expr arguments
• SC2307: Warn about insufficient number of arguments to expr
• SC2308: Suggest other approaches for non-standard expr extensions
• SC2313: Warn about read with unquoted, array indexed variable

Fixed

• SC2102 about repetitions in ranges no longer triggers on [[ -v arr[xx] ]]
• SC2155 now recognizes typeset and local read-only declare statements
• SC2181 now tries to avoid triggering for error handling functions
• SC2290: Warn about misused = in declare & co, which were not caught by SC2270+
• The flag --color=auto no longer outputs color when TERM is "dumb" or unset

Changed

• SC2048: Warning about $* now also applies to ${array[*]}
• SC2181 now only triggers on single condition tests like [ $? = 0 ].
• Quote warnings are now emitted for declaration utilities in sh
• Leading _ can now be used to suppress warnings about unused variables
• TTY output now includes warning level in text as well as color

Removed

• SC1004: Literal backslash+linefeed in '' was found to be usually correct

v0.7.2 - 2021-04-19

Added

• disable directives can now be a range, e.g. disable=SC3000-SC4000
• SC1143: Warn about line continuations in comments
• SC2259/SC2260: Warn when redirections override pipes
• SC2261: Warn about multiple competing redirections
• SC2262/SC2263: Warn about aliases declared and used in the same parsing unit
• SC2264: Warn about wrapper functions that blatantly recurse
• SC2265/SC2266: Warn when using & or | with test statements
• SC2267: Warn when using xargs -i instead of -I
• SC2268: Warn about unnecessary x-comparisons like [ x$var = xval ]

Fixed

• SC1072/SC1073 now respond to disable annotations, though ignoring parse errors is still purely cosmetic and does not allow ShellCheck to continue.
• Improved error reporting for trailing tokens after ]/]] and compound commands
• #!/usr/bin/env -S shell is now handled correctly
• Here docs with \r are now parsed correctly and give better warnings

Changed

• Assignments are now parsed to spec, without leniency for leading $ or spaces
• POSIX/dash unsupported feature warnings now have individual SC3xxx codes
• SC1090: A leading $x/ or $(x)/ is now treated as ./ when locating files
• SC2154: Variables appearing in -z/-n tests are no longer considered unassigned
• SC2270-SC2285: Improved warnings about misused =, e.g. ${var}=42

v0.7.1 - 2020-04-04

Fixed

• -f diff no longer claims that it found more issues when it didn't
• Known empty variables now correctly trigger SC2086
• ShellCheck should now be compatible with Cabal 3
• SC2154 and all command-specific checks now trigger for builtins called with builtin

Added

• SC1136: Warn about unexpected characters after ]/]]
• SC2254: Suggest quoting expansions in case statements
• SC2255: Suggest using $((..)) in [ 2*3 -eq 6 ]
• SC2256: Warn about translated strings that are known variables
• SC2257: Warn about arithmetic mutation in redirections
• SC2258: Warn about trailing commas in for loop elements

Changed

• SC2230: 'command -v' suggestion is now off by default (-i deprecate-which)
• SC1081: Keywords are now correctly parsed case sensitively, with a warning

v0.7.0 - 2019-07-28

Added

• Precompiled binaries for macOS and Linux aarch64
• Preliminary support for fix suggestions
• New -f diff unified diff format for auto-fixes
• Files containing Bats tests can now be checked
• Directory wide directives can now be placed in a .shellcheckrc
• Optional checks: Use --list-optional to show a list of tests, Enable with -o flags or enable=name directives
• Source paths: Use -P dir1:dir2 or a source-path=dir1 directive to specify search paths for sourced files.
• json1 format like --format=json but treats tabs as single characters
• Recognize FLAGS variables created by the shflags library.
• Site-specific changes can now be made in Custom.hs for ease of patching
• SC2154: Also warn about unassigned uppercase variables (optional)
• SC2252: Warn about [ $a != x ] || [ $a != y ], similar to SC2055
• SC2251: Inform about ineffectual ! in front of commands
• SC2250: Warn about variable references without braces (optional)
• SC2249: Warn about case with missing default case (optional)
• SC2248: Warn about unquoted variables without special chars (optional)
• SC2247: Warn about $"(cmd)" and $"{var}"
• SC2246: Warn if a shebang's interpreter ends with /
• SC2245: Warn that Ksh ignores all but the first glob result in [
• SC2243/SC2244: Suggest using explicit -n for [ $foo ] (optional)
• SC1135: Suggest not ending double quotes just to make $ literal

Changed

• If a directive or shebang is not specified, a .bash/.bats/.dash/.ksh extension will be used to infer the shell type when present.
• Disabling SC2120 on a function now disables SC2119 on call sites

Fixed

• SC2183 no longer warns about missing printf args for %()T

v0.6.0 - 2018-12-02

Added

• Command line option --severity/-S for filtering by minimum severity
• Command line option --wiki-link-count/-W for showing wiki links
• SC2152/SC2151: Warn about bad exit values like 1234 and "foo"
• SC2236/SC2237: Suggest -n/-z instead of ! -z/-n
• SC2238: Warn when redirecting to a known command name, e.g. ls > rm
• SC2239: Warn if the shebang is not an absolute path, e.g. #!bin/sh
• SC2240: Warn when passing additional arguments to dot (.) in sh/dash
• SC1133: Better diagnostics when starting a line with |/||/&&

Changed

• Most warnings now have useful end positions
• SC1117 about unknown double-quoted escape sequences has been retired

Fixed

• SC2021 no longer triggers for equivalence classes like [=e=]
• SC2221/SC2222 no longer mistriggers on fall-through case branches
• SC2081 about glob matches in [ .. ] now also triggers for !=
• SC2086 no longer warns about spaces in $#
• SC2164 no longer suggests subshells for cd ..; cmd; cd ..
• read -a is now correctly considered an array assignment
• SC2039 no longer warns about LINENO now that it's POSIX

v0.5.0 - 2018-05-31

Added

• SC2233/SC2234/SC2235: Suggest removing or replacing (..) around tests
• SC2232: Warn about invalid arguments to sudo
• SC2231: Suggest quoting expansions in for loop globs
• SC2229: Warn about 'read $var'
• SC2227: Warn about redirections in the middle of 'find' commands
• SC2224/SC2225/SC2226: Warn when using mv/cp/ln without a destination
• SC2223: Quote warning specific to : ${var=value}
• SC1131: Warn when using elseif or elsif
• SC1128: Warn about blanks/comments before shebang
• SC1127: Warn about C-style comments

Fixed

• Annotations intended for a command's here documents now work
• Escaped characters inside groups in =~ regexes now parse
• Associative arrays are now respected in arithmetic contexts
• SC1087 about $var[@] now correctly triggers on any index
• Bad expansions in here documents are no longer ignored
• FD move operations like {fd}>1- now parse correctly

Changed

• Here docs are now terminated as per spec, rather than by presumed intent
• SC1073: 'else if' is now parsed correctly and not like 'elif'
• SC2163: 'export $name' can now be silenced with 'export ${name?}'
• SC2183: Now warns when printf arg count is not a multiple of format count

v0.4.7 - 2017-12-08

Added

• Statically linked binaries for Linux and Windows (see README.md)!
• -a flag to also include warnings in sourced files
• SC2221/SC2222: Warn about overridden case branches
• SC2220: Warn about unhandled error cases in getopt loops
• SC2218: Warn when using functions before they're defined
• SC2216/SC2217: Warn when piping/redirecting to mv/cp and other non-readers
• SC2215: Warn about commands starting with leading dash
• SC2214: Warn about superfluous getopt flags
• SC2213: Warn about unhandled getopt flags
• SC2212: Suggest false over [ ]
• SC2211: Warn when using a glob as a command name
• SC2210: Warn when redirecting to an integer, e.g. foo 1>2
• SC2206/SC2207: Suggest alternatives when using word splitting in arrays
• SC1117: Warn about double quoted, undefined backslash sequences
• SC1113/SC1114/SC1115: Recognized more malformed shebangs

Fixed

• [ -v foo ] no longer warns if foo is undefined
• SC2037 is now suppressed by quotes, e.g. PAGER="cat" man foo
• Ksh nested array declarations now parse correctly
• Parameter Expansion without colons are now recognized, e.g. ${foo+bar}
• The lastpipe option is now respected with regard to subshell warnings
• \( is now respected for grouping in [
• Leading \ is now ignored for commands, to allow alias suppression
• Comments are now allowed after directives to e.g. explain 'disable'

v0.4.6 - 2017-03-26

Added

• SC2204/SC2205: Warn about ( -z foo ) and ( foo -eq bar )
• SC2200/SC2201: Warn about brace expansion in [/[[
• SC2198/SC2199: Warn about arrays in [/[[
• SC2196/SC2197: Warn about deprecated egrep/fgrep
• SC2195: Warn about unmatchable case branches
• SC2194: Warn about constant 'case' statements
• SC2193: Warn about [[ file.png == *.mp3 ]] and other unmatchables
• SC2188/SC2189: Warn about redirections without commands
• SC2186: Warn about deprecated tempfile
• SC1109: Warn when finding &/>/< unquoted
• SC1108: Warn about missing spaces in [ var= foo ]

Changed

• All files are now read as UTF-8 with lenient latin1 fallback, ignoring locale
• Unicode quotes are no longer considered syntactic quotes
• ash scripts will now be checked as dash with a warning

Fixed

• -c no longer suggested when using grep -o | wc
• Comments and whitespace are now allowed before filewide directives
• Here doc delimiters with esoteric quoting like foo"" are now handled
• SC2095 about ssh in while read loops is now suppressed when using -n
• %(%Y%M%D)T now recognized as a single formatter in printf checks
• grep -F now suppresses regex related suggestions
• Command name checks now recognize busybox applet names

v0.4.5 - 2016-10-21

Added

• A Docker build (thanks, kpankonen!)
• SC2185: Suggest explicitly adding path for find
• SC2184: Warn about unsetting globs (e.g. unset foo[1])
• SC2183: Warn about printf with more formatters than variables
• SC2182: Warn about ignored arguments with printf
• SC2181: Suggest using command directly instead of if [ $? -eq 0 ]
• SC1106: Warn when using test operators in (( 1 -eq 2 ))

Changed

• Unrecognized directives now causes a warning rather than parse failure.

Fixed

• Indices in associative arrays are now parsed correctly
• Missing shebang warning squashed when specifying with a directive
• Ksh multidimensional arrays are now supported
• Variables in substring ${a:x:y} expansions now count as referenced
• SC1102 now also handles ambiguous $((
• Using $(seq ..) will no longer suggest quoting
• SC2148 (missing shebang) is now suppressed when using shell directives
• [ a '>' b ] is now recognized as being correctly escaped

v0.4.4 - 2016-05-15

Added

• Haskell Stack support (thanks, Arguggi!)
• SC2179/SC2178: Warn when assigning/appending strings to arrays
• SC1102: Warn about ambiguous $(((
• SC1101: Warn when \ linebreaks have trailing spaces

Changed

• Directives directly after the shebang now apply to the entire file

Fixed

• {$i..10} is now flagged similar to {1..$i}

v0.4.3 - 2016-01-13

Fixed

• Build now works on GHC 7.6.3 as found on Debian Stable/Ubuntu LTS

v0.4.2 - 2016-01-09

Added

• First class support for the dash shell
• The --color flag similar to ls/grep's (thanks, haguenau!)
• SC2174: Warn about unexpected behavior of mkdir -pm (thanks, eatnumber1!)
• SC2172: Warn about non-portable use of signal numbers in trap
• SC2171: Warn about ]] without leading [[
• SC2168: Warn about local outside functions

Fixed

• Warnings about unchecked cd will no longer trigger with set -e
• [ a -nt/-ot/-ef b ] no longer warns about being constant
• Quoted test operators like [ foo "<" bar ] now parse
• Escaped quotes in backticks now parse correctly

v0.4.1 - 2015-09-05

Fixed

• Added missing files to Cabal, fixing the build

v0.4.0 - 2015-09-05

Added

• Support for following sourced files
• Support for setting default flags in SHELLCHECK_OPTS
• An --external-sources flag for following arbitrary sourced files
• A source directive to override the filename to source
• SC2166: Suggest using [ p ] && [ q ] over [ p -a q ]
• SC2165: Warn when nested for loops use the same variable name
• SC2164: Warn when using cd without checking that it succeeds
• SC2163: Warn about export $var
• SC2162: Warn when using read without -r
• SC2157: Warn about [ "$var " ] and similar never-empty string matches

Fixed

• cat -vnE file and similar will no longer flag as UUOC
• Nested trinary operators in (( )) now parse correctly
• Ksh ${ ..; } command expansions now parse

v0.3.8 - 2015-06-20

Changed

• ShellCheck's license has changed from AGPLv3 to GPLv3.

Added

• SC2156: Warn about injecting filenames in find -exec sh -c "{}" \;

Fixed

• Variables and command substitutions in brace expansions are now parsed
• ANSI colors are now disabled on Windows
• Empty scripts now parse

v0.3.7 - 2015-04-16

Fixed

• Build now works on GHC 7.10
• Use regex-tdfa over regex-compat since the latter crashes on OS X.

v0.3.6 - 2015-03-28

Added

• SC2155: Warn about masked return values in export foo=$(exit 1)
• SC2154: Warn when a lowercase variable is referenced but not assigned
• SC2152/SC2151: Warn about bad return values like 1234 and "foo"
• SC2150: Warn about find -exec "shell command" \;

Fixed

• coproc is now supported
• Trinary operator now recognized in ((..))

Removed

• Zsh support has been removed

v0.3.5 - 2014-11-09

Added

• SC2148: Warn when not including a shebang
• SC2147: Warn about literal ~ in PATH
• SC1086: Warn about $ in for loop variables, e.g. for $i in ..
• SC1084: Warn when the shebang uses !# instead of #!

Fixed

• Empty and comment-only backtick expansions now parse
• Variables used in PS1/PROMPT_COMMAND/trap now count as referenced
• ShellCheck now skips unreadable files and directories
• -f gcc on empty files no longer crashes
• Variables in $".." are now considered quoted
• Warnings about expansions in single quotes now include backticks

v0.3.4 - 2014-07-08

Added

• SC2146: Warn about precedence when combining find -o with actions
• SC2145: Warn when concatenating arrays and strings

Fixed

• Case statements now support ;& and ;;&
• Indices in array declarations now parse correctly
• let expressions now parsed as arithmetic expressions
• Escaping is now respected in here documents

Changed

• Completely drop Makefile in favor of Cabal (thanks rodrigosetti!)

v0.3.3 - 2014-05-29

Added

• SC2144: Warn when using globs in [/[[
• SC2143: Suggesting using grep -q over [ "$(.. | grep)" ]
• SC2142: Warn when referencing positional parameters in aliases
• SC2141: Warn about suspicious IFS assignments like IFS="\n"
• SC2140: Warn about bad embedded quotes like echo "var="value""
• SC2130: Warn when using -eq on strings
• SC2139: Warn about define time expansions in alias definitions
• SC2129: Suggest command grouping over a >> log; b >> log; c >> log
• SC2128: Warn when expanding arrays without an index
• SC2126: Suggest grep -c over grep|wc
• SC2123: Warn about accidentally overriding $PATH, e.g. PATH=/my/dir
• SC1083: Warn about literal {/} outside of quotes
• SC1082: Warn about UTF-8 BOMs

Fixed

• SC2051 no longer triggers for {1,$n}, only {1..$n}
• Improved detection of single quoted sed variables, e.g. sed '$s///'
• Stop warning about single quoted variables in PS1 and similar
• Support for Zsh short form loops, =(..)

Removed

• SC1000 about unescaped lonely $, e.g. grep "^foo$"

v0.3.2 - 2014-03-22

Added

• SC2121: Warn about trying to set variables, e.g. set var = value
• SC2120/SC2119: Warn when a function uses $1.. if none are ever passed
• SC2117: Warn when using su in interactive mode, e.g. su foo; whoami
• SC2116: Detect useless use of echo, e.g. for i in $(echo $var)
• SC2115/SC2114: Detect some catastrophic rm -r "$empty/" mistakes
• SC1081: Warn when capitalizing keywords like While
• SC1077: Warn when using acute accents instead of backticks

Fixed

• Shells are now properly recognized in shebangs containing flags
• Stop warning about math on decimals in ksh/zsh
• Stop warning about decimal comparisons with =, e.g. [ $version = 1.2 ]
• Parsing of |&
• ${a[x]} not counting as a reference of x
• (( x[0] )) not counting as a reference of x

v0.3.1 - 2014-02-03

Added

• The -s flag to specify shell dialect
• SC2105/SC2104: Warn about break/continue outside loops
• SC1076: Detect invalid [/[[ arithmetic like [ 1 + 2 = 3 ]
• SC1075: Suggest using elif over else if

Fixed

• Don't warn when comma separating elements in brace expansions
• Improved detection of single quoted sed variables, e.g. sed '$d'
• Parsing of arithmetic for loops using {..} instead of do..done
• Don't treat the last pipeline stage as a subshell in ksh/zsh

v0.3.0 - 2014-01-19

Added

• A man page (thanks Dridi!)
• GCC compatible error reporting (shellcheck -f gcc)
• CheckStyle compatible XML error reporting (shellcheck -f checkstyle)
• Error codes for each warning, e.g. SC1234
• Allow disabling warnings with # shellcheck disable=SC1234
• Allow disabling warnings with --exclude
• SC2103: Suggest using subshells over cd foo; bar; cd ..
• SC2102: Warn about duplicates in char ranges, e.g. [10-15]
• SC2101: Warn about named classes not inside a char range, e.g. [:digit:]
• SC2100/SC2099: Warn about bad math expressions like i=i+5
• SC2098/SC2097: Warn about foo=bar echo $foo
• SC2095: Warn when using ssh/ffmpeg in while read loops
• Better warnings for missing here doc tokens

Fixed

• Don't warn when single quoting variables with ssh/perl/eval
• ${!var} is now counted as a variable reference

Removed

• Suggestions about using parameter expansion over basename
• The jsoncheck binary. Use shellcheck -f json instead.

v0.2.0 - 2013-10-27

Added

• Suggest ./* instead of * when passing globs to commands
• Suggest pgrep over ps | grep
• Warn about unicode quotes
• Warn about assigned but unused variables
• Inform about client side expansion when using ssh

Fixed

• CLI tool now uses exit codes and stderr canonically
• Parsing of extglobs containing empty patterns
• Parsing of bash style eval foo=(bar)
• Parsing of expansions in here documents
• Parsing of function names containing :+-
• Don't warn about find|xargs when using -print0

v0.1.0 - 2013-07-23

Added

• First release