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ESLint VS Shellcheck

Compare ESLint VS Shellcheck and see what are their differences

ESLint logo ESLint

The fully pluggable JavaScript code quality tool

Shellcheck logo Shellcheck

ShellCheck finds bugs in your shell scripts
  • ESLint Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-09-14
  • Shellcheck Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-07-26

ESLint features and specs

  • Customization
    ESLint is highly customizable through configuration files, allowing developers to tailor the linting process to fit their specific coding standards and project requirements.
  • Extensibility
    With a wide range of plugins and the ability to write custom rules, ESLint can be extended to accommodate unique project needs or additional languages and frameworks.
  • Community Support
    ESLint has a large and active community, ensuring continuous improvement, frequent updates, and a wealth of shared knowledge and resources.
  • Integrations
    ESLint integrates seamlessly with most development environments, build tools, and version control systems, making it easy to incorporate into existing workflows.
  • Error Prevention
    By statically analyzing code to catch potential errors and bad practices before runtime, ESLint helps improve code quality and reduce bugs.
  • Consistency
    Applying ESLint across a project ensures coding standards are maintained consistently, which is particularly beneficial for teams with multiple developers.

Possible disadvantages of ESLint

  • Initial Setup
    Configuring ESLint for the first time can be daunting, especially for those who are new to the tool or have complex project requirements.
  • Performance
    On large codebases, ESLint can sometimes slow down builds or editor performance due to the extensive analysis it performs.
  • Learning Curve
    There is a learning curve associated with understanding and configuring ESLint rules, which can be challenging for beginners.
  • Strictness
    Depending on the configuration, ESLint can be very strict, leading to a large number of warnings or errors that may initially overwhelm developers not accustomed to such rigorous linting.
  • Opinionated Rules
    Some ESLint default rules may not align with every developer's or team's coding style preferences, necessitating further customization and adjustment.
  • Maintenance
    Keeping ESLint configurations and plugins up to date requires ongoing maintenance, especially as projects evolve and dependencies change.

Shellcheck features and specs

  • Static Code Analysis
    ShellCheck provides static analysis for shell scripts, allowing developers to catch errors and potential bugs without executing the script.
  • Comprehensive Error Detection
    It identifies a broad range of issues, including syntax errors, semantic errors, and best practice violations, helping to improve script reliability.
  • Suggestions for Improvements
    ShellCheck offers suggestions and fixes for many issues it detects, assisting developers in adhering to best practices.
  • Wide Compatibility
    ShellCheck supports various shell dialects, including Bash, Dash, and others, making it versatile for different environments.
  • Open Source
    Being open-source, ShellCheck is freely available to everyone, with a community that contributes to its improvement and updates.
  • Integration with Editors
    ShellCheck integrates with various text editors and IDEs, enabling seamless error checking within the developer's workflow.

Possible disadvantages of Shellcheck

  • Learning Curve
    Users may need time to learn and understand ShellCheck's feedback, especially if they are not familiar with shell scripting best practices.
  • Potential Overhead
    While it provides valuable insights, using ShellCheck can add an overhead to the development process as scripts need to be checked and errors reviewed.
  • Not a Substitute for Testing
    ShellCheck should not be considered a substitute for thorough testing. Scripts still need to be executed to ensure functional correctness.
  • False Positives
    Like many static analyzers, ShellCheck may generate false positives, which can be misleading and require manual verification by the developer.
  • Resource Intensive for Large Scripts
    Analyzing very large or complex scripts might consume significant resources, potentially slowing down the workflow on older machines.

ESLint videos

ESLint Quickstart - find errors automatically

More videos:

  • Review - ESLint + Prettier + VS Code โ€” The Perfect Setup
  • Review - Linting and Formatting JavaScript with ESLint in Visual Studio Code

Shellcheck videos

Linting Your Bash Scripts with Shellcheck

More videos:

  • Tutorial - How To Configure ShellCheck in Jenkins
  • Review - Write Safer Scripts Using Shellcheck

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to ESLint and Shellcheck)
Code Coverage
96 96%
4% 4
Code Analysis
95 95%
5% 5
Developer Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Code Review
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare ESLint and Shellcheck

ESLint Reviews

8 Best Static Code Analysis Tools For 2024
You can use ESLint through a supported IDE such as VS Code, Eclipse, and IntelliJ IDEA or integrate it with your CI pipelines. Moreover, you can install it locally using a package manager like npm, yarn, npx, etc.
Source: www.qodo.ai

Shellcheck Reviews

We have no reviews of Shellcheck yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, ESLint should be more popular than Shellcheck. It has been mentiond 298 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

ESLint mentions (298)

  • The Judgement Pyramid: Reasoning vs Measurement
    Is this reasoning, or measurement? If measurement, push it to a deterministic tool. Sonar, Spotless, Ruff, ESLint, coverage gates, pre-commit hooks, complexity calculators. Write a script if no tool exists. That's how just lint got built, and that's the Unix-philosophy move for agentic coding. Hooks fire on tool calls; CI fires on PRs; pre-commit fires on commit. Pick the cheapest layer that catches the failure... - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • How to Build a Dependency Map of a Legacy Codebase Using AI Tools
    137Foundry provides legacy modernization services that include dependency mapping as a foundational assessment phase. Prettier and ESLint are useful companion tools for enforcing code style consistency as the refactoring proceeds. Node.js and Python.org official documentation are authoritative references for understanding the import and module systems of those runtimes. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • How to Prepare a Legacy Codebase for AI-Assisted Refactoring
    Prettier and ESLint are useful tools for establishing consistent code style as a baseline before starting structural refactoring - style differences in a diff make behavioral changes harder to spot. OWASP provides useful checklists for security-critical code review that apply directly to the critical path review step. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • When to Split a React Component (And When You're Over-Engineering)
    Splitting for file length alone, splitting before a pattern appears at least twice, and splitting in ways that produce tightly coupled pairs of components are the patterns most worth avoiding. ESLint with the react-hooks plugin helps catch when extracted hooks still have too many concerns, by flagging dependency arrays that have grown unwieldy. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • 7 Free Tools and Resources for Building Well-Structured React Applications
    ESLint is a standard part of the JavaScript and TypeScript toolchain. The eslint-plugin-react-hooks plugin, which is maintained by the React team, adds two rules specifically for React: rules-of-hooks enforces the rules of hooks at the call site level, and exhaustive-deps flags missing or unnecessary dependencies in useEffect, useMemo, and useCallback. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
View more

Shellcheck mentions (30)

  • Haskell: A Great Procedural Language
    The other ones most people point to are https://pandoc.org and https://shellcheck.net. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • I reduced the size of my Docker image by 40% โ€“ Dockerizing shell scripts
    > Are "Random shell scripts from the internet" categorically worse than "random docker images from the internet"? > With the shell script, you can literally read it in an ... ... https://shellcheck.net. Can't do that if all of the work is hidden in a Dockerfile's RUN statement. I have my team commit shell scripts in shell script files, and the Dockerfile just runs that shell script. - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • TermiC: Terminal C, Interactive C/C++ REPL shell created with BASH
    Nice script. It's... uhhh... Not shellcheck-clean. https://shellcheck.net/. - Source: Hacker News / almost 3 years ago
  • ChatGPT is a boon for linux noobs (but use with caution)
    Another fairly valuable resource is https://shellcheck.net which I use a bit more often than ChatGPT if I need help scripting. Source: about 3 years ago
  • I can't run the shell
    Always check your shell scripts at a site like http://shellcheck.net. Source: about 3 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing ESLint and Shellcheck, you can also consider the following products

Prettier - An opinionated code formatter

Cppcheck - Cppcheck is an analysis tool for C/C++ code. It detects the types of bugs that the compilers normally fail to detect. The goal is no false positives. CppCheckDownload cppcheck for free.

CodeClimate - Code Climate provides automated code review for your apps, letting you fix quality and security issues before they hit production. We check every commit, branch and pull request for changes in quality and potential vulnerabilities.

Coverity Scan - Find and fix defects in your Java, C/C++ or C# open source project for free

Tailwind CSS - A utility-first CSS framework for rapidly building custom user interfaces.

SonarQube - SonarQube, a core component of the Sonar solution, is an open source, self-managed tool that systematically helps developers and organizations deliver Clean Code.