How to wait in bash for several subprocesses to finish and return exit code !=0 when any subprocess ends with code !=0?

Question

How to wait in a bash script for several subprocesses spawned from that script to finish and return exit code !=0 when any of the subprocesses ends with code !=0 ?

S

Answer 1

I almost fell into the trap of using jobs -p to collect PIDs, which does not work if the child has already exited, as shown in the script below. The solution I picked was simply calling wait -n N times, where N is the number of children I have, which I happen to know deterministically.

#!/usr/bin/env bash

sleeper() {
    echo "Sleeper $1"
    sleep $2
    echo "Exiting $1"
    return $3
}

start_sleepers() {
    sleeper 1 1 0 &
    sleeper 2 2 $1 &
    sleeper 3 5 0 &
    sleeper 4 6 0 &
    sleep 4
}

echo "Using jobs"
start_sleepers 1

pids=( $(jobs -p) )

echo "PIDS: ${pids[*]}"

for pid in "${pids[@]}"; do
    wait "$pid"
    echo "Exit code $?"
done

echo "Clearing other children"
wait -n; echo "Exit code $?"
wait -n; echo "Exit code $?"

echo "Waiting for N processes"
start_sleepers 2

for ignored in $(seq 1 4); do
    wait -n
    echo "Exit code $?"
done

Output:

Using jobs
Sleeper 1
Sleeper 2
Sleeper 3
Sleeper 4
Exiting 1
Exiting 2
PIDS: 56496 56497
Exiting 3
Exit code 0
Exiting 4
Exit code 0
Clearing other children
Exit code 0
Exit code 1
Waiting for N processes
Sleeper 1
Sleeper 2
Sleeper 3
Sleeper 4
Exiting 1
Exiting 2
Exit code 0
Exit code 2
Exiting 3
Exit code 0
Exiting 4
Exit code 0