Write and run tests for your Bash scripts.
A testing framework for Bash 3.0+. It ships 93 assertions plus spies, mocks, data providers, snapshots and more.
Install the latest version into your project:
curl -s https://bashunit.com/install.sh | bashWrite a test in tests/example_test.sh:
#!/usr/bin/env bash function test_bashunit_is_working() { assert_same "bashunit is working" "bashunit is working" }
Run it:
./lib/bashunit tests/
The table shows one example from each assertion family. See all assertions and signatures, or run bashunit doc locally:
| Family | Example |
|---|---|
| Equality & truth | assert_equals "foo" "$actual" |
| Strings | assert_string_starts_with "Hello" "$greeting" |
| Exit codes | assert_exit_code "1" (checks $? of the previous command) |
| Numeric | assert_greater_than "1" "$count" |
| Arrays | assert_array_length 3 "${my_array[@]}" |
| Files & dirs | assert_file_permissions 644 "$file" |
JSON (needs jq) |
assert_json_contains ".name" "bashunit" "$json" |
| Dates | assert_date_before "2026-01-01" "$date" |
| Duration | assert_duration_less_than "echo hello" 500 |
| Snapshots | assert_match_snapshot "$(my_cmd)" |
| Test doubles | assert_have_been_called_times 2 my_fn |
Installation instructions, feature references, and examples are at bashunit.com.
Shell tab-completion for bash and zsh is available under completions/. See the installation docs.
The AI agent guide covers machine-readable results and API mistakes that let generated tests pass without checking the intended behavior. Plain-text docs are available at llms.txt and llms-full.txt, with an agent skill at bashunit-skill.md.
Issues, ideas and pull requests are welcome. See the contribution guide to set up your environment.