ShellCheck
Hacker ApprovedRanked 6 of 14 linters by recommenders
Free linter that flags common mistakes and quoting errors in shell scripts, and people recommend it for writing more reliable Bash. Critics say it adds noisy best-practice warnings.
Free linter that flags common mistakes and quoting errors in shell scripts, and people recommend it for writing more reliable Bash. Critics say it adds noisy best-practice warnings.
21 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 19
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 90%
Recommended in 10 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 19 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 9.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 10 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Works as an editor linter
“Integrate Shellcheck into your editor, and you get automated help for writing more reliable Bash.”
Comment from 11 Jul 2026 in “Amber the programming language compiled to Bash/Ksh/Zsh” “Possibly the most important tip is to use ShellCheck as a linter on your scripts”
Comment from 26 Jul 2026 in “A shell colon does nothing. Use it anyway.” “I agree completely, if you use a linter like shellcheck”
Comment from 27 Jul 2026 in “A shell colon does nothing. Use it anyway.” - Comment from 15 Mar 2026 in “Ask HN: How is AI-assisted coding going for you professionally?”
Catches quoting mistakes and common errors
“It also helps you do quoting correctly when using single brackets.”
Comment from 15 Jan 2026 in “Test Your Square Brackets” “it will generally correctly warn about missing quoting”
Comment from 12 Oct 2026 in “The tilde in your PATH may not be your HOME” “using Shellcheck to point out common errors”
Comment from 7 Jan 2026 in “The Case for Nushell (2023)” Improves scripts and teaches best practice
“Shellcheck was a big game changer at least in terms of learning some of the nuance from a "best practice" standpoint.”
Comment from 27 Feb 2026 in “What does " 2>&1 " mean?” “Shellcheck catches lots of things and shall really make your Bash scripts better.”
Comment from 26 Feb 2026 in “What does " 2>&1 " mean?” “It turns a total newbie into a shell master just by iteration.”
Comment from 9 Dec 2025 in “If you're going to vibe code, why not do it in C?” Long-running, widely trusted tool
“I'm using shellcheck since at least 2012/2014.”
Comment from 27 Jul 2026 in “A shell colon does nothing. Use it anyway.” “When unsure, use shellcheck.”
Comment from 15 Jan 2026 in “Test Your Square Brackets” “I would recommend shellcheck”
Comment from 26 Feb 2026 in “What does " 2>&1 " mean?”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Noisy best-practice warnings
“filling my editor with useless warnings about what it believes are best practices”
Comment from 12 Jul 2026 in “Amber the programming language compiled to Bash/Ksh/Zsh” “pathological monitoring by shellcheck”
Comment from 23 May 2026 in “Rubish: A Unix shell written in pure Ruby”
Other linters people recommend
The four most recommended other linters, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ruff | 115 | 16 | 88% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Clippy (Rust linter) | 58 | 31 | 65% | 12 | — | — |
| ESLint | 32 | 22 | 59% | 11 | — | — |
| Biome | 23 | 5 | 82% | 10 | — | Approved |
| ShellCheckThis page | 19 | 2 | 90% | 10 | — | Approved |
What people said
23 of the 25 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“it will generally correctly warn about missing quoting”
“I'm using shellcheck since at least 2012/2014.”
“I agree completely, if you use a linter like shellcheck”
“Possibly the most important tip is to use ShellCheck as a linter on your scripts”
“Shellcheck has good heuristics, like making mistakes with for and subshell variables.”
“by and large I find it helpful”
“filling my editor with useless warnings about what it believes are best practices”
“Integrate Shellcheck into your editor, and you get automated help for writing more reliable Bash.”
“shellcheck is a huge help in the middle sized shell script space”
“pathological monitoring by shellcheck”
“I think shellcheck helps quite a lot”
“It really helps if you have linters such as shellcheck.”
“Shellcheck was a big game changer at least in terms of learning some of the nuance from a "best practice" standpoint.”
“Shellcheck catches lots of things and shall really make your Bash scripts better.”
“I would recommend shellcheck”
“all scripts have to pass ShellCheck to "build"”
“It also helps you do quoting correctly when using single brackets.”
“When unsure, use shellcheck.”
“it's an overly anal linter that'll keep you sharp”
“using Shellcheck to point out common errors”
“It turns a total newbie into a shell master just by iteration.”
“keeping my .sh scripts compatible”
“some popular ones that may be useful to hn'ers”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.