SC2034.md

Pattern: Unused variable

Issue: -

Description

Variables not used for anything are often associated with bugs, so ShellCheck warns about them.

Also note that something like local let foo=42 does not make a let statement local -- it instead declares an additional local variable named let.

Example of incorrect code:

foo=42
echo "$FOO"

Example of correct code:

foo=42
echo "$foo"

Exceptions

ShellCheck may not always realize that the variable is in use (especially with indirection), and may not realize you don't care (with throwaway variables or unimplemented features).

For throwaway variables, consider using _ as a dummy:

read _ last _ zip _ _ <<< "$str"
echo "$last, $zip"

or use a directive to disable the warning:

# shellcheck disable=SC2034
read first last email zip lat lng <<< "$str"
echo "$last, $zip"

For indirection, there's not much you can do without rewriting to use arrays or similar:

bar=42  # will always appear unused
foo=bar
echo "${!foo}"

This is expected behavior, and not a bug. There is no good way to statically analyze indirection in shell scripts, just like static C analyzers have a hard time preventing segfaults.

Further Reading

• ShellCheck - SC2034