What's That Do?

Six months ago you coded up a 100 line shell script. It made perfect sense then, but now you look at it and wonder, "Just what does that do?" This is a common pitfall among programmers—especially those writing in a shell language. Unfortunately, shells have developed with more than their fair share of obscure punctuation. This is a blessing for keeping typing to a minimum but doesn't help readability. It's important to make your code as readable as possible.