Computer-based pre-execution analysis and verification utility for shell scripts

A computer-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions for verifying shell scripts, the method comprising the computer-implemented steps of:

• storing, on a computer-readable medium, semantic guidelines that indicate rules, distinct from any rules imposed by the programming language in which the shell scripts are written, about what the scripts should or should not contain, wherein the rules indicated in the semantic guidelines include one or more rules which, if not followed in the shell script, do not result in errors when the shell script is executed;
• and,
• prior to executing a shell script, one or more processors of a computer system performing one or more syntactic verification checks on said shell script, wherein said one or more syntactic verification checks verify conformance of said shell script to a set of syntactic guidelines;
• and,
• performing one or more semantic verification checks on said shell script, wherein said one or more semantic verification checks verify conformance to the rules indicated in said semantic guidelines.