A new technique for detecting shock waves and recognising the shock patterns in compressible flow solutions computed by means of shock-capturing solvers is proposed and discussed. This newly developed technique uses the Hough transform and a least squares fit to further post-process the data provided by a classical shock detection technique based on local criteria. This two-steps analysis significantly enhances the quality of the shock lines extracted from numerical solutions; moreover, it allows to correctly recognise the complex shock-wave patterns that arise when the flow solution is characterised by the presence of multiple interacting shocks.