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shfmt is a command-line utility whose sole purpose is to parse and re-format shell scripts according to a consistent style, making it indispensable for developers who maintain large codebases of Bash, POSIX sh, or other shell dialects. Written in Go by Daniel Martí, the tool reads shell source files, applies configurable indentation, aligns redirections and case-statement patterns, and writes the result back either in place or to stdout, thereby eliminating the perennial debate over tabs versus spaces or where to place a then keyword. Typical use cases include continuous-integration pipelines that must reject unformatted code, editor hooks that tidy files on save, and repository-wide style migrations that would be error-prone to perform manually. Because shfmt exposes flags for indentation width, binary operator placement, and language variant (POSIX, Bash, mksh), teams can codify their house style once and enforce it automatically across every shell script in a project. The program is distributed under the BSD license and is available in eight numbered releases, the current one being 3.13.0, each delivered as a statically linked executable for Windows, macOS, Linux, and FreeBSD without further dependencies. As a development-category tool, shfmt integrates smoothly with IDEs such as Visual Studio Code and Vim through readily available plugins, and its deterministic output ensures that two runs on the same input byte-for-byte identical, simplifying checksum-based build caching. The software is available for free on get.nero.com, with downloads provided via trusted Windows package sources (e.g. winget), always delivering the latest version, and supporting batch installation of multiple applications.
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