A group of academics is exploring static analysis techniques to enhance the reliability and correctness of Unix shell scripts, which are prone to serious bugs. The project aims to provide pre-runtime guarantees to developers, similar to those in statically typed languages. The research centers on addressing the unpredictable behavior of shell environments like Bash and Zsh, which can lead to severe issues, including file deletion. Despite being widely used, shell programming often lacks academic focus due to its unusual semantics and historical context.
Shell scripts can therefore be difficult to debug, develop, and maintain. And yet they're everywhere.
Because of certain characteristics that it has, it's unusual. It's a source of many, many serious bugs or problems, both in terms of supply chain security and in terms of correctness.
Collection
[
|
...
]