Return an exit code without closing shell

Question

I\'d like to return an exit code from a BASH script that is called within another script, but could also be called directly. It roughly looks like this:

#!/b         


        

Answer 1

You can use return if you use set -e in the beginning of the script.

If you just want to check if the function returned no errors, I'd rather suggest rewriting your code like this:

#!/bin/bash

set -e # exit program if encountered errors

dq2-get ()
{
  # define the function here
  # ...
  if [ $1 -eq 0 ]
  then
    return 0
  else
    return 255
  # Note that nothing will execute from this point on,
  # because `return` terminates the function.
}

# ...
# lots of code ...
# ...

# Now, the test:
# This won't exit the program.
if $(dq2-get $1); then
  echo "No errors, everything's fine"
else
  echo "ERROR: ..."
fi
# These commands execute anyway, no matter what
# `dq2-get $1` returns (i.e. {0..255}).
# extract, do some stuff
# ...

Now, the code above won't leave the program if the function dq2-get $1 returns errors. But, implementing the function all by itself will exit the program because of the set -e. The code below describes this situation:

# The function below will stop the program and exit
# if it returns anything other than `0`
# since `set -e` means stop if encountered any errors.
$(dq2-get $1)
# These commands execute ONLY if `dq2-get $1` returns `0`
# extract, do some stuff
# ...