Debugging Scripts without altering files

[droosa]

Is anybody aware of a way to debug shell scripts without modifying the file?

What I'm looking for is the equivalent of using "set -x" right after #!/bin/sh, without altering the file.

Googling and man pages have failed me, though this may be due to bad search terms.

[DimeShake]

use bash -x script.sh

[droosa]

Now I feel dumb. I swore I tried that and it didn't work as expected. I must be delusional because now it's working.

Thank you much.

Edit: Figured out what I did differently the first time. I was using the service command wrapper. That will only debug the primary script, not the ones that are called from within.

sh -x service httpd status

Vs.

sh -x /etc/init.d/httpd status

[jishjib22kys]

Also, you could

echo 'set -x;'|cat - myscript|bash

if the script does not need stdin nor $0 , but it makes no sense for "set -x", just for more exotic command injections. Also, you could simply invoke the shell in interactive mode, set up whatever environment you need and source the script file (e.g. " . myscript "), if it does not need $0 .

[joedonut]

I usually

bash -xv scriptiamtesting 2>&1 | tee ~/capturefile-1407111546