Proposing a few improvements

[afh]

Just came across gh-install on HN. While reading through the script I saw a few opportunities to improve it. Hope this helps :)

• Using a subshell to execute commands in a different directory avoids the need forpopd.

(
cd$tmp
extract $filename
PS3="Select binary: "
select bin in $(find * -type f -not -path "*$filename"); do break; done
)

• Using alternatives in case-matches avoids duplicated commands
• Instead of failing with "command not found" gh-install could check for non-standard dependencies using command
• gh-install users probably care less about its internal in error messages than gh-install developers, hence a more generic error message could be more appropriate

            case $arg in
                *.tar.bz2|*.tbz2)  tar xjf $arg      ;;
                *.tar.gz|*tar.xz|*.tgz)   tar xzf $arg      ;;
                *.bz2)      bunzip2 $arg      ;;
                *.gz)       gunzip $arg       ;;
                *.tar)      tar xf $arg       ;;
                *.zip)      unzip $arg        ;;
                *.Z)        uncompress $arg   ;;
                *.rar)
                    rar=$(command -v rar)
                    if [ -z "$rar" ]; then echo "Please install the rar utility"; exit 1; fi
                    $rar x $arg
                    ;;
                *.jar)
                    jar=$(command -v jar)
                    if [ -z "$jar" ]; then echo "Please install the jar utility"; exit 1; fi
                    jar -xvf $arg
                    ;;
               *)          echo "Don't know how to unpack '$arg'" ;;

[redraw]

Thanks for the tips!

I don't usually copy-paste scripts literally from the internet, but this extract() method was taken literally from https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/168/245465. I think I'll credit it, and apply your tips.

I used to do 7z x which handles many formats, but wasn't sure if it would be installed on most operating systems.

[afh]

Glad you like the proposal for improvement.

While 7z might be a convenient utility it is an external dependency that usually isn't installed on most systems so use of tar(1), bunzip2(1), gunzip(1) is preferrable.

Giving credit where credit is due will be greatly appreciated :)