#!/bin/bash
USAGE="my-script — does one thing well
Usage:
my-script <input> <output>
Options:
<input> Input file to read.
<output> Output file to write. Use '-' for stdout.
-h Show this message.
"
help() {
echo "$USAGE"
}
This is my standard approach which is cleaner for putting the documentation at the very top of the file like the linked article.
As far as I know. The POSIX spec[1] simply declares that in single quotes all characters will be preserved exactly, except for single quotes, which aren't allowed. Likewise, for double quotes, except that it also performs expansions ($) and allows escaping (\).
That's exactly what I do. For others who were not aware that multi-line strings can be used, this is POSIX-compatible (most of my shell scripts are executed by `dash`).
