Shell logging helpers

TL;DR

Where we look at a few functions to log on standard error.

Some time ago I fell in love with Log::Log4perl. To the point that I wrote Log::Log4perl::Tiny, a stripped down replacement that served me well in the years.

In the shell, I use to define similar functions, usually with less functionality (i.e. _LOG is quite crude but effective):

_LOG() {
   : ${LOGLEVEL:='INFO'}
   LEVELS='
TRACE  TRACE DEBUG INFO WARN ERROR FATAL
DEBUG        DEBUG INFO WARN ERROR FATAL
INFO               INFO WARN ERROR FATAL
WARN                    WARN ERROR FATAL
ERROR                        ERROR FATAL
FATAL                              FATAL
   '
   local timestamp="$(date '+%Y-%m-%dT%H%M%S%z')"
   if printf '%s' "$LEVELS" \
         | grep "^$LOGLEVEL .* $1" >/dev/null 2>&1 ; then
      printf >&2 '[%s] [%5s] %s\n' "$timestamp" "$@"
   fi
}
TRACE()  { _LOG TRACE "$*"; }
DEBUG()  { _LOG DEBUG "$*"; }
INFO()   { _LOG INFO  "$*"; }
WARN()   { _LOG WARN  "$*"; }
ERROR()  { _LOG ERROR "$*"; }
FATAL()  { _LOG FATAL "$*"; }
LOGDIE() { FATAL "$*"; exit 1; }

I hope this can be helpful!

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