Have you ever had a brain fart at work and accidentally deleted the PRODUCTION database because you thought you were in the development environment? Yeah, me too…

Here’s a simple bash script that might save your life (multiple times).

Let me draw the scenario:

• Your company has different environments (prod, dev, etc…)
• It’s possible to accidentally run a bash command meant for development environment in a production environment, which will have fatal consequences

Below is a fictitious wrapper function for a dangerous_cmd only meant to be used in a development environment.

function dangerous_cmd(){
    echo "Running dangerous_cmd wrapper"
    # Assume that dangerous_cmd environment returns the environment you are currently in
    env=$(dangerous_cmd environment) 
    if [[ $env == "development" ]]; then
        # 'command' is a bash built-in that avoids shell function lookup
        # We need this because otherwise we would be stuck in a infinite loop,
        # calling 'dangeroud_cmd` over and over again
        # '$@' passes all the arguments passed to the function to this call
        command dangerous_cmd $@; 
        return
    fi
    echo "Not in development environment! Not running dangerous_cmd"
}

The main workhorse of of this function is the bash built-ins command and $@

• command(StackOverflow Description) runs our command without doing a shell function look-up, which we need to avoid infinitely calling dangerous_cmd
• $@ passes all the parameters to this point. Useful illustration

The good thing about using a bash function wrapper with the same name is that:

• Autocomplete still works as usual
• You can add more complex checking logic as you see fit
• You don’t have to remember any obscure commands

I put bash functions like these in my .bashrc or bash_profile (Mac)

Here is an example of a wrapper function that only allows running something like skaffold delete (A command that cleans up your development environment by deleting all pods and services related to your application) in a minikube (Basically development) Kubernetes environment. Trust me you don’t want to run skaffold delete in production.

function skaffold(){
    echo "Running skaffold wrapper"
    context=$(kubectl config current-context)
    if [[ $context == "minikube" ]]; then
        command skaffold $@;
        return
    fi
    echo "Not in minikube context! Not running skaffold command"
}