Lost In It 🧭

This space is a logbook from a fellow wayfarer in the world of IT.

In the world of software development, it’s easy to feel lost. I know—I’ve spent years navigating those same cryptic errors and shifting architectures. But after a long time wandering the IT landscape, you start to see the patterns beneath the chaos.

Lost In It is a collection of insights from someone who has been on the trail for a long time. It’s not just about the code; it’s about the journey of building software that lasts. This isn’t a rigid map, but a series of documented discoveries, hard-won lessons, and effective solutions found along the way.

You’re not lost; we’re exploring—and I’ve brought the compass.

The Logbook

The if Statement Secret: It Checks Exit Status, Not Booleans

Coming from almost any other programming language, you’d expect if to work on boolean expressions. You write something that evaluates to true or false, and the if decides which branch to take.

Bash works in a way that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike that.

In Bash, if runs a command and checks its exit status. Zero means success (the “then” branch runs). Non-zero means failure (the “else” branch runs, if present).

NUL-Delimited Workflows: Handling Any Filename Safely

Pop quiz: what characters can appear in a filename on Linux?

If you answered “letters, numbers, dots, dashes, underscores,” you’re thinking of sensible filenames. The actual answer is: every character except / (path separator) and NUL (the zero byte).

That includes spaces. Tabs. Newlines. Quote marks. Backslashes. Asterisks. Emoji. Control characters. Bell characters that make your terminal beep. All perfectly legal in filenames.

And that’s a problem, because most UNIX tools assume newlines separate records. When a filename contains a newline, tools get confused:

Error-First Pattern: Writing Self-Documenting Bash

There’s a pattern in shell scripts that makes code harder to read than it needs to be. It looks like this:

if [[ -f "$config_file" ]]; then
  if [[ -r "$config_file" ]]; then
    source "$config_file"
    if [[ -n "$DATABASE_URL" ]]; then
      connect_to_database
      if [[ $? -eq 0 ]]; then
        run_migrations
        # ... and so on
      else
        echo "Connection failed" >&2
        exit 1
      fi
    else
      echo "DATABASE_URL not set" >&2
      exit 1
    fi
  else
    echo "Config not readable" >&2
    exit 1
  fi
else
  echo "Config not found" >&2
  exit 1
fi

You’ve seen this. You’ve probably written this. I haven’t. Sorry, not sorry.

Lost In It | A Wayfarer's Log in Tech

A developer blog sharing the journey, not the map. Documenting lessons learned in software development and IT. You're not lost, we're exploring.

Lost In It 🧭

This space is a logbook from a fellow wayfarer in the world of IT.

The Logbook

The if Statement Secret: It Checks Exit Status, Not Booleans

NUL-Delimited Workflows: Handling Any Filename Safely

Error-First Pattern: Writing Self-Documenting Bash

More

Have You Got the SKILLs? Teaching AI to Write Better Bash

On Bash Testing: Design, Not Just Safety

Benchmarking Bash Scripts: Measuring Real Performance Improvements

Designing Modular Bash: Functions, Namespaces, and Library Patterns

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