Even though this is an old question, it seems to be popular on Google. I was also looking for a bash minifer/obfuscator, and didn't like the one in the answer.
I didn't want to add gibberish either, or compile the script. So I wrote one that did what I wanted in Perl, and put it on GitHub at https://github.com/Aralhach/bashobfus/tree/master
It can:
- Flatten indentation
- Remove full-line comments (except the initial hashbang (#!)) and blank lines
- Renames all lowercase variables in basic declarations (to avoid renaming variables like PATH), for loops, array access, and 'read' statements.
There might be some case where it fails, but I tested it with a fairly big bash script, and the listed cases of variable replacing popped up. It also leaves variables within single quotes (') alone --this popped up when printing an AWK script-- but replaces between single quotes (') when the statement is already inside double quotes (") --this popped up when printing an MySQL statement.
This makes me think I've covered all the big use cases, but I've been wrong before. If you find any bugs, feel free to report them (or fix them! :D). I was also thinking of adding a feature to join short lines into one with ";" but the cases were too many to analyze while making my deadline.
I hope people find it useful!
