Question

I would like to log out all my “set -x” output into my syslog file.
However, the syslog file has my own custom format.

But set -x output does not have formatting.

How can I do that?

Answer 1

If you look at print_cmd.c in the Bash source code, you’ll see that the format of set -x output is not configurable.

You could trap the DEBUG “signal” to implement your own custom logging, e.g.

trap 'logger -p user.debug -t SHELLSCRIPT -- "$BASH_COMMAND" || :' DEBUG

to send all commands to syslog with facility user, level debug, and tag SHELLSCRIPT.