Script sourcing

This shell library provides utilites for sourcing scripts in relative manner in larger bash or zsh codebases.

Provided functions

Script Directory

script_directory is a zero argument function that returns the directory of the calling script file. It works only when called from the script, it won't work when calling from shell

Example:

local scriptDir="$(script_directory)"
echo "$scriptDir"

Include

include is a wrapper function for source builtin. It provides an alternative to source command, letting calling script to source another in two ways:

• by script's absolute path
• by script's path relative to the calling script

Optionally it can take more than one argument and these arguments will be passed to the sourced script.

Example:

include "/absoulte/path/script.sh"
include "relative/path/script.sh"
include "script.sh" -f file.txt # optional arguments to pass to 'script.sh'

Compatibility

These two functions will work both in zsh and bash environments. script_directory function, which is also used is include, provides two versions - one for bash and one for zsh.

During the source process, based on BASH_VERSION and ZSH_VERSION environment variables, the version corresponding to the current shell will be selected. If the shell interpreter cannot be determined, the source process will stop and error will be printed on the screen.

How to use this library

In your bash/zsh codebase at the very beginning add:

source "/path/to/script-sourcing/script-sourcing.sh"

If source-scripting directory is relative to the executed script, then you can get script directory and source the file this way:

if [ -n "$BASH_VERSION" ]; then
    dir="$(dirname "$BASH_SOURCE")"
elif [ -n "$ZSH_VERSION" ]; then
    dir="$(dirname "${(%):-%N}")"
fi
source "$dir/path/to/script-sourcing/script-sourcing.sh"

After sourcing the library, you can start using include and script_directory, and forget about source limitations completely.