2010/8/12 Bart Schaefer <schaefer@brasslantern.com>

> On Aug 12, 12:23pm, Guillaume Brunerie wrote:
> }
> } Is there some option (for example --check-syntax) such that
> } $ zsh --check-syntax /path/to/a/shell/script
> } doesn't do anything except that the return code would be 0
> } if /path/to/a/shell/script is indeed a shell script, and non zero
> otherwise?
>
> $ zsh -n /path/to/some/file
>
> or equivalently but more obviously
>
> $ zsh -o no_exec /path/to/some/file

will parse but not execute the file, and exit with failure if there is
> a parse error.


Thank you :-)


> However, just because a file doesn't cause a parse error
> is not a guarantee that it is a shell script, and parsing a very big
> file is potentially expensive.
>

I want that because I have aliased cat to use 'source-highlight' when given
only one argument (in order to have syntax highlighting in the shell) and
this doesn't work for shell scripts without extension nor shebang (like most
system scripts in /etc).
But it seems indeed that many files are syntactically correct but aren't at
all shell scripts (like /etc/inittab).
If someone knows a better solution, please let me know.