Forward function declarations in a Bash or a Shell script?

Question

Is there such a thing in bash or at least something similar (work-around) like forward declarations, well known in C / C++, for instance?

Or there is so

Answer 1

Great question. I use a pattern like this for most of my scripts:

#!/bin/bash

main() {
    foo
    bar
    baz
}

foo() {
}

bar() {
}

baz() {
}

main "$@"

You can read the code from top to bottom, but it doesn't actually start executing until the last line. By passing "$@" to main() you can access the command-line arguments $1, $2, et al just as you normally would.

Answer 2

When my bash scripts grow too much, I use an include mechanism:

File allMyFunctions:

foo() {
}

bar() {
}

baz() {
}

File main:

#!/bin/bash

. allMyfunctions

foo
bar
baz