is there a way to write a command with lots of options in a more legible\maintainable script format? [duplicate]

Question

My question may not be clear enough, so here's a specific example.

I have an rsync bin\bash script with a ton of option switches.

Instead of:

rsync --recursive --times --update --chown=root,root --bwlimit=500

I'd like to be able to write my script like this:

rsync
--recursive 
--times 
--update 
--chown=root,root 
--bwlimit=500

That way, I can easily comment out or edit individual options if I need to.

Is there any way to do this?

Answer 1

Yep. Just escape the end of line with a \. Like this:

rsync \
  --recursive \
  --times \
  --update \
  --chown=root,root \
  --bwlimit=500

The amount of whitespace is irrelevant, the important thing is having the \ as the last character. So you can even align them all nicely like this:

rsync               \
  --recursive       \
  --times           \
  --update          \
  --chown=root,root \
  --bwlimit=500

Note that there can be no whitespace (or anything else) after the \, it must be the last character.

Answer 2

Can't speak for other linux distributions but,

in RHEL/CentOS 7 I like creating

/etc/profile.d/myaliases.sh

and in your case would do

alias rsync2='rsync --recursive --times --update --chown=root,root --bwlimit=500'

change rsync2 to whatever you like, then all you need to do is type rsync2