"Standardized" docstring/self-documentation of bash scripts

Question

Background

Python scripts, for example, can have several "levels" of documentation via docstrings. What's neat about it, is that they can be defined at per-function levels, per-method levels, per-class levels, and most importantly (in the context of my question): per-file levels. For example, the top of the file may look like so:

#!/usr/bin/env python
"""
@brief  A script that does cool stuff.
"""

What's especially useful about this feature is that it's easy to extract and print at run-time.

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Question

Do bash scripts support such a feature? i.e. is there a "standardized" approach to generating a file-level set of documentation (i.e. human-readable description of the purpose of the script, usage syntax, etc.; so that it's easy for another script to automatically parse/extract this information? My goal is to create several debug scripts that are self-documenting, and if there's already a standard/de-facto-best way to do this, I'd like to avoid re-inventing the wheel.

Answer 1

The "File Header" section of Google's Shell Style Guide is one way to add a 'docstring' to your bash scripts.

Basically, the answer is to use #, rather than quotes like you would with Python.

Answer 2

There is no standard for docstrings for bash. It's always nice to have man pages though (eg. https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-unix-creating-a-manpage/), or info pages (https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/164443/how-to-create-info-documentation).