UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

hi...

I want some tips for standardizing shell script code...

That's rather nebulous. But a good place to start is to define the language to be used. You want shell scripts that can run on any platform you are likely to use. For the shell itself, I would go with ksh or bash. Our friend Chris Johnson would go one step futher and limit things to the syntax blessed by posix which will run on bask or ksh or a number of other shells. Most of us would prohibit csh.

Shells rarely can stand completely on their own. You need to use external programs. sed, awk, and perl are commonly used. I personally would get lost quickly in a ksh script that made extensive use of ruby or python. We have plenty of systems without either language. There is a posix list of required external commands. There is no posix perl nor any posix language with the power of perl. I would press for posix commands + perl.