---
license: mit
task_categories:
- text-generation
language:
- en
tags:
- bash
- shell
- code
- instruction-tuning
- sft
- command-line
size_categories:
- 10K<n<100K
pretty_name: Bash Instruct II 55k
configs:
- config_name: default
  data_files: bash_dataset.jsonl
---

# Bash Instruct II 55k

A synthetic **instruction-tuning dataset** that maps natural-language requests to correct
**Bash** — single commands, short pipelines, and multi-line scripts — for fine-tuning
small LLMs to turn plain requests into runnable shell code.

Each example is a chat conversation (`system` / `user` / `assistant`). Rows carry metadata
for slicing (`category`, `utility`) and for grouping equivalent answers to one request
(`variant_group`). This is the **second-generation** build: chat format, grouped
alternative answers, real human phrasing seeded from tldr-pages, a strict utility cap, and
validation by both static analysis and **real execution on Linux**.

| | |
|---|---|
| 🐙 GitHub (clone + tooling) | https://github.com/ya5h-P/bash-instruct-55k |
| 🤗 Hugging Face (viewer) | https://huggingface.co/datasets/Frost2o24/bash-instruct-II-55k |

```python
from datasets import load_dataset
ds = load_dataset("Frost2o24/bash-instruct-II-55k", split="train")
```

---

## At a glance

| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Rows | **54,803** |
| Distinct requests (`variant_group`s) | 45,142 |
| `single` / `pipeline` / `script` | **40% / 35% / 25%** (exact) |
| Distinct primary utilities | 183 |
| `bash -n` valid | **100%** (0 syntax errors) |
| Executed on real Linux (correctness on gradable) | **≈100% clean** |
| Exact-duplicate `(request, command)` pairs | 0 |
| Unique request text per request | ≈97% |
| Requests with ≥2 equivalent answers | ≈17% |
| Max share of any one utility (requests / rows) | ≤ 4.9% / ≤ 6.0% |

---

## Format

One JSON object per line (`bash_dataset.jsonl`):

```json
{
  "messages": [
    {"role": "system",    "content": "You are a Bash expert."},
    {"role": "user",      "content": "Show the last 20 lines of error.log."},
    {"role": "assistant", "content": "tail -n 20 error.log"}
  ],
  "category": "single",
  "utility": "tail",
  "variant_group": "3f9a1c0b7e2d4a86"
}
```

| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
| `messages` | The training conversation. The system prompt is one of 5 equivalent Bash-assistant prompts, rotated so the model doesn't overfit a single string. |
| `category` | `single` (one command) · `pipeline` (pipes, `&&`/`\|\|`, `$(...)`, `xargs`) · `script` (multi-line: `set -euo pipefail`, functions, `getopts`, `trap`, loops, here-docs). |
| `utility` | The primary command of the solution (`grep`, `awk`, `find`, `for`, …). |
| `variant_group` | 16-hex id shared by rows that answer the **same request** with different-but-equivalent commands (e.g. `wc -l f` vs `cat f \| wc -l`). Solo requests get a unique id. |

**System / info utilities** that small models often fumble are covered with correct,
idiomatic usage and guaranteed minimum counts: `journalctl`, `pstree`, `lsof`, `vmstat`,
`w`, `nice`, `renice`, `free`, `hostname`, `ss`, `iostat`, `netstat`, `dmesg`, `uptime`.

---

## Loading

```python
from datasets import load_dataset
ds = load_dataset("Frost2o24/bash-instruct-II-55k", split="train")   # or: json, data_files="bash_dataset.jsonl"
print(ds[0]["messages"])

import collections
print(collections.Counter(ds["category"]))
print(collections.Counter(ds["utility"]).most_common(15))

# collapse to one canonical answer per request
seen, canonical = set(), []
for r in ds:
    if r["variant_group"] not in seen:
        seen.add(r["variant_group"]); canonical.append(r)
print(len(canonical), "distinct requests")
```

Peek without Python:

```bash
head -n 1 bash_dataset.jsonl | jq .
jq -r '.utility' bash_dataset.jsonl | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head
```

---

## Quality & validation

Three layers, in increasing strength:

1. **`bash -n`** on every command — **0 / 54,803 syntax failures.**
2. **shellcheck** (warning level) on a large sample — the few findings are style nits
   (`SC2010` `ls | grep`, `SC2164` `cd` without check).
3. **Real execution** of the runnable subset in a disposable Linux sandbox (Debian 13
   via WSL): 43,257 commands run; after cleaning (below), essentially all *gradable*
   commands execute cleanly.

"Gradable" excludes failures that are **environmental, not command defects** — a blank
sandbox legitimately lacks referenced files, users, services, CLI args, root, or systemd
(e.g. `ps -C postgres` when postgres isn't running, `chown ec2-user:` when that user is
absent, `rmdir` on a populated fixture dir). Those commands are correct; only the sandbox
lacks the target, so they are **kept**.

### Data cleaning

Whole-set execution flagged **43 genuinely-malformed commands** — bad argument
count/format that fail on *any* system (mostly tldr-seed placeholder fills that slipped
the filter). They were **removed** (55,000 → 54,957). What was cut:

- `echo "host" | git credential fill/approve/reject` — needs `key=value` input, not a bare host
- `split 10 10 file`, `shuf 3 5 file` — too many operands
- `date --rfc-3339 20`, `date 2026-03-01 @<ts>` — bad / extra operand
- `uname java`, `cp --parents f1 f2`, `lspci -s notes.xml`, `head 20 -3 file`
- `echo -e "appdb" | tsort` — odd number of tokens

A second pass (manual analysis + a stricter validator) caught two generator bugs and
fixed them at the source (55,000 → **54,808**):

- **Invalid long-form flag variant.** The answer-diversity generator applied a command's
  short→long flag map across a whole pipeline, leaking e.g. grep's `-n → --line-number`
  onto a downstream `tail -n` → `tail --line-number` (invalid). **146 rows removed**;
  the generator now restricts substitution to the owning command's segment. (`tail --lines`
  / `head --lines` are valid on GNU and were kept.) Also removed 3 `kill --CONT <name>`.
- **`find -size` missing its comparison operator.** "larger than N" requests emitted bare
  `-size N` (means *exactly* N). **113 rows repaired** to `-size +N`; the template now sets
  `+`/`-` from the request direction.

Re-running the hardened validator (now with `set -o pipefail` + a per-stage stderr scan for
`invalid/unrecognized option`) then surfaced **5 more** malformed rows the old exit-status
check had missed — `journalctl <service> <service>` (bare units need `-u`) — which were
removed (→ **54,803**).

### Running the validator yourself (`validate.py`)

Validation is **decoupled** from generation — nothing in `generate.py` calls it.

```bash
# instant static checks: bash -n on every command + shellcheck (if installed),
# broken down by category and utility
python validate.py --data bash_dataset.jsonl

# execute the SAFE self-contained subset in a disposable fixture dir
python validate.py --data bash_dataset.jsonl --execute --n 3000

# whole-set execution on a THROWAWAY Linux box (WSL etc.): runs nearly every
# single-line command AND scripts, then reports the genuine-error rate and offers
# to delete those rows (backs up the dataset first)
python validate.py --data bash_dataset.jsonl --execute --permissive --n 60000 --timeout 5
```

Two execution modes:

- **strict** (default) — only self-contained, read-only coreutils on relative paths.
- **`--permissive`** — for a disposable Linux box. Runs ≈43k rows including scripts and
  system-info / fs-mutating tools, while **hard-blocking** genuinely dangerous commands
  (`dd`/`mkfs`/`shutdown`/`reboot`/`mount`, fork bombs, `kill`/`pkill`, writes to
  `/etc`·`/var`·`$HOME`, block devices) and **skipping** anything that would hang (`tail -f`,
  `watch`, `while true`, `sleep`, installers, network, `yes`). Every command runs in a
  temp sandbox with a timeout, `stdin` from `/dev/null`, `sudo` stripped, and `stdout`
  discarded so infinite-output commands can't exhaust memory.

The report separates **ran-clean**, **environmental** (not correctness failures), and
**genuine errors** (bad flag/option/logic). `--dump-errors FILE` writes every genuine
error for inspection; `--yes` / `--no` control the delete prompt non-interactively.

---

## Reproducing (`generate.py`)

```bash
python generate.py plan            # quota table + registered recipes
python generate.py run             # generate to ./bash_dataset.jsonl (resumable)
python generate.py status          # where a run stands
python generate.py validate-all    # re-run bash -n over the whole file
python generate.py seeds           # build/inspect the real-phrasing seed pool
```

Resumable: `bash_dataset.jsonl` is ground truth and a derived `bash_dataset.progress.json`
snapshot is rewritten after every batch, so re-running continues where it stopped.

### How it's built

- **Recipe engine** — ≈150 hand-written recipe families emit `(request, command)` pairs by
  combining varied phrasings with realistic parameter pools (filenames, dirs, ports,
  services, users, patterns). Every parameter is drawn **once** per example and reused in
  both the request and the command, so they never disagree.
- **Argument-fidelity gate** (`argcheck.py`) — a pair is rejected unless the command
  references the concrete nouns the request names (filename, extension, user, group,
  service, process, port).
- **Real phrasing (seeds)** — a share of requests are seeded from
  [tldr-pages](https://github.com/tldr-pages/tldr): the human description becomes the
  request, its command the solution, with `{{placeholders}}` filled fresh from the pools.
  Heavily quality-filtered (subcommand multiplexers and non-fillable placeholders dropped)
  down to ≈600 clean coreutils/text/net templates, cached in `seeds/_seedcache.json`.
- **Answer diversity** — a share of requests also emit 1–2 genuinely-equivalent alternates
  sharing a `variant_group` (flag reorderings, long/short options, `wc -l f` ↔
  `cat f | wc -l`, `sort -u` ↔ `sort | uniq`, …), each re-checked before it's kept.
- **Guards** — SHA-1 dedup; a degeneracy guard rejecting no-op transforms (`sed 's/x/x/'`,
  `mv f f`); category quotas (40/35/25); a 4% per-utility request cap + 6% row cap;
  minimum floors for the system/info utilities; and a `bash -n` gate on every command.

### Tunable flags

| Flag | Default | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| `--target` | 55000 | Total rows (rescales quotas, caps, floors). |
| `--seed-frac` | 0.40 | Target share of seedable requests drawn from real seeds. |
| `--seed-reuse` | 8 | Max reuse of one tldr template (higher = more real phrasing, less request variety). |
| `--variant-frac` | 0.30 | Share of requests that attempt alternate answers. |
| `--row-cap-pct` | 0.06 | Max total-row share per utility (trades off answer diversity). |
| `--no-net` | off | Never download seeds; use the local cache only. |

Seed and answer-diversity fractions are **soft** (they land under target when the clean
seed pool or the caps bind). The hard invariants — category split, caps, floors, argument
fidelity, `bash -n`, dedup — always hold.

---

## Files

| File | What it is |
|---|---|
| `bash_dataset.jsonl` | The dataset — 54,803 rows (≈22 MB, no Git LFS needed). |
| `generate.py` | The generator (reproducible, resumable). |
| `validate.py` | Standalone validator (strict + `--permissive` execution). |
| `argcheck.py` | Argument-fidelity checker (generation gate + standalone auditor). |
| `seeds/_seedcache.json` | Cleaned real-phrasing templates so generation runs offline. |

## Intended use & limitations

**Good for** teaching a small model to map natural-language requests to correct single
commands, short pipelines, and small scripts — including the fumble-prone system utilities.

- **Synthetic.** Variety comes from recombining templates + token pools and a
  quality-filtered slice of real tldr phrasings; request *shapes* come from a finite family
  set (phrasing is diversified — request text ≈97% unique).
- **Valid ≠ fully semantically correct.** `bash -n`, shellcheck, sandbox execution, and the
  argument gate show commands parse, lint, run, and use the request's nouns — none prove
  the command's *logic* perfectly matches intent (e.g. an `awk` column index assumes a
  particular layout).
- **Single-turn.** No explanations or negative examples, aside from the equivalent answers
  grouped by `variant_group`.

## License

MIT.