From owner-freebsd-questions  Mon Nov  8 17:16:19 1999
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From: "Crist J. Clark" <cjc@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com>
Message-Id: <199911090119.UAA39447@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com>
Subject: Re: shell's exit status variable
In-Reply-To: <Pine.A41.4.03.9911081423040.59796-100000@tiwa.gate.net> from William Melanson at "Nov 8, 1999 02:26:28 pm"
To: wjm@gate.net (William Melanson)
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1999 20:19:14 -0500 (EST)
Cc: sl@zeus.dnt.md (slava revutchi), freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
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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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