How to echo shell commands as they are executed

set -x or set -o xtrace expands variables and prints a little + sign before the line.

set -v or set -o verbose does not expand the variables before printing.

Use set +x and set +v to turn off the above settings.

On the first line of the script, one can put #!/bin/sh -x (or -v) to have the same effect as set -x (or -v) later in the script.

The above also works with /bin/sh.

See the bash-hackers' wiki on set attributes, and on debugging.

$ cat shl
#!/bin/bash                                                                     

DIR=/tmp/so
ls $DIR

$ bash -x shl 
+ DIR=/tmp/so
+ ls /tmp/so
$

set -x will give you what you want.

Here is an example shell script to demonstrate:

#!/bin/bash
set -x #echo on

ls $PWD

This expands all variables and prints the full commands before output of the command.

Output:

+ ls /home/user/
file1.txt file2.txt