Bash Tips 6 – Embedding Files in a Single Bash Script

Fri, 17 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Scripts that utilize multiple files are not easy to distribute. We usually distribute those as archives and rely on the end user to unpack and run them from a predetermined location. To improve the experience we can instead prepare a single script with other files embedded inside it.

Here are the goals:

The script should consist of a single file, making it easy to distribute.
The script should be copy-paste-able between systems and different editors, even if multiple hops are required.
Files being embedded can be binary files i.e. can contain non-printable characters.
The first requirement implies that we should somehow store the contents of other files in our main script. The second requires us to avoid non-printable characters, as they tend to cause problems when performing a copy-paste operation. Especially when we are talking about sending such characters over messaging programs.

Encoding

The solution to the second and third problems is a binary-to-text encoding which encodes an array of bytes into a text constant of printable characters. And the most commonly used encoding scheme is base64. Utils to encode to and from base64 are included in most Linux distributions out-of-the-box.

Backup Pages on Bash Compiler Documentation

Bash Tips 6 – Embedding Files in a Single Bash Script

Encoding