set -x
or set -o xtrace
expands variables and prints a little + sign before the line.
set -v
or set -o verbose
does not expand the variables before printing.
Use set +x
and set +v
to turn off the above settings.
On the first line of the script, one can put #!/bin/sh -x
(or -v
) to have the same effect as set -x
(or -v
) later in the script.
The above also works with /bin/sh
.
See the bash-hackers’ wiki on set
attributes, and on debugging.
$ cat shl
#!/bin/bash
DIR=/tmp/so
ls $DIR
$ bash -x shl
+ DIR=/tmp/so
+ ls /tmp/so
$