Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1999 20:19:14 -0500 (EST) From: "Crist J. Clark" <cjc@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com> To: wjm@gate.net (William Melanson) Cc: sl@zeus.dnt.md (slava revutchi), freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: shell's exit status variable Message-ID: <199911090119.UAA39447@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.A41.4.03.9911081423040.59796-100000@tiwa.gate.net> from William Melanson at "Nov 8, 1999 02:26:28 pm"
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William Melanson wrote,
> On Mon, 8 Nov 1999, slava revutchi wrote:
>
> %
> % Hello,
> %
> % How do I check the shell's exit status variable?
> %
> % Thanks.
> % slava
> %
>
> I know within the bash shell it would be as such:
>
> >[script]; echo $?
>
> The "$?" varaible prints the exit status of the last command run.
> Either a "1" or "0".
Actually I believe the return can be any int value. Many commands exit
with different non-zero values depending on what type error was
generated. Two quick examples,
% man dump
...
Dump exits with zero status on success. Startup errors are indicated
with an exit code of 1; abnormal termination is indicated with an exit
code of 3.
...
% man grep
...
Normally, exit status is 0 if matches were found, and 1 if
no matches were found. (The -v option inverts the sense
of the exit status.) Exit status is 2 if there were syn-
tax errors in the pattern, inaccessible input files, or
other system errors.
...
However, '0' is the accepted value for "success," non-zero is
"failure."
--
Crist J. Clark cjclark@home.com
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