Exit codes are a number between 0 and 255, which is returned by any Unix command when it returns control to its parent process.
Other numbers can be used, but these are treated modulo 256, so exit -10 is equivalent to exit 246, and exit 257 is equivalent to exit 1.

These can be used within a shell script to change the flow of execution depending on the success or failure of commands executed. This was briefly introduced in Variables - Part II. Here we shall look in more detail in the available interpretations of exit codes.

Success is traditionally represented with exit 0; failure is normally indicated with a non-zero exit-code. This value can indicate different reasons for failure.
For example, GNU grep returns 0 on success, 1 if no matches were found, and 2 for other errors (syntax errors, non-existent input files, etc).

We shall look at three different methods for checking error status, and discuss the pros and cons of each approach.

Firstly, the simple approach:

---

#!/bin/sh
# First attempt at checking return codes
USERNAME=`grep "^${1}:" /etc/passwd|cut -d":" -f1`
if [ "$?" -ne "0" ]; then
  echo "Sorry, cannot find user ${1} in /etc/passwd"
  exit 1
fi
NAME=`grep "^${1}:" /etc/passwd|cut -d":" -f5`
HOMEDIR=`grep "^${1}:" /etc/passwd|cut -d":" -f6`

echo "USERNAME: $USERNAME"
echo "NAME: $NAME"
echo "HOMEDIR: $HOMEDIR"

---

This script works fine if you supply a valid username in /etc/passwd. However, if you enter an invalid code, it does not do what you might at first expect - it keeps running, and just shows:

USERNAME: 
NAME: 
HOMEDIR: 

Why is this? As mentioned, the $? variable is set to the return code of the last executed command. In this case, that is cut. cut had no problems which it feels like reporting - as far as I can tell from testing it, and reading the documentation, cut returns zero whatever happens! It was fed an empty string, and did its job - returned the first field of its input, which just happened to be the empty string.

So what do we do? If we have an error here, grep will report it, not cut. Therefore, we have to test grep's return code, not cut's.

---

#!/bin/sh
# Second attempt at checking return codes
grep "^${1}:" /etc/passwd > /dev/null 2>&1
if [ "$?" -ne "0" ]; then
  echo "Sorry, cannot find user ${1} in /etc/passwd"
  exit 1
fi
USERNAME=`grep "^${1}:" /etc/passwd|cut -d":" -f1`
NAME=`grep "^${1}:" /etc/passwd|cut -d":" -f5`
HOMEDIR=`grep "^${1}:" /etc/passwd|cut -d":" -f6`

echo "USERNAME: $USERNAME"
echo "NAME: $NAME"
echo "HOMEDIR: $HOMEDIR"

---

This fixes the problem for us, though at the expense of slightly longer code.
That is the basic way which textbooks might show you, but it is far from being all there is to know about error-checking in shell scripts. This method may not be the most suitable to your particular command-sequence, or may be unmaintainable. Below, we shall investigate two alternative approaches.

As a second approach, we can tidy this somewhat by putting the test into a separate function, instead of littering the code with lots of 4-line tests:

---

#!/bin/sh
# A Tidier approach

check_errs()
{
  # Function. Parameter 1 is the return code
  # Para. 2 is text to display on failure.
  if [ "${1}" -ne "0" ]; then
    echo "ERROR # ${1} : ${2}"
    # as a bonus, make our script exit with the right error code.
    exit ${1}
  fi
}

### main script starts here ###

grep "^${1}:" /etc/passwd > /dev/null 2>&1
check_errs $? "User ${1} not found in /etc/passwd"
USERNAME=`grep "^${1}:" /etc/passwd|cut -d":" -f1`
check_errs $? "Cut returned an error"
echo "USERNAME: $USERNAME"
check_errs $? "echo returned an error - very strange!"

---

This allows us to test for errors 3 times, with customised error messages, without having to write 3 individual tests. By writing the test routine once. we can call it as many times as we wish, creating a more intelligent script, at very little expense to the programmer. Perl programmers will recognise this as being similar to the die command in Perl.

As a third approach, we shall look at a simpler and cruder method. I tend to use this for building Linux kernels - simple automations which, if they go well, should just get on with it, but when things go wrong, tend to require the operator to do something intelligent (ie, that which a script cannot do!):

---

#!/bin/sh
cd /usr/src/linux && \
make dep && make bzImage && make modules && make modules_install && \
cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/my-new-kernel && cp System.map /boot && \
echo "Your new kernel awaits, m'lord."

This script runs through the various tasks involved in building a Linux kernel (which can take quite a while), and uses the && operator to check for success. To do this with if would involve:

---

#!/bin/sh
cd /usr/src/linux
if [ "$?" -eq "0" ]; then
  make dep 
    if [ "$?" -eq "0" ]; then
      make bzImage 
      if [ "$?" -eq "0" ]; then
        make modules 
        if [ "$?" -eq "0" ]; then
          make modules_install
          if [ "$?" -eq "0" ]; then
            cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/my-new-kernel
            if [ "$?" -eq "0" ]; then
              cp System.map /boot/
              if [ "$?" -eq "0" ]; then
                echo "Your new kernel awaits, m'lord."
              fi
            fi
          fi
        fi
      fi
    fi
  fi
fi

---

... which I, personally, find pretty difficult to follow.

The && and || operators are the shell's equivalent of AND and OR tests. These can be thrown together as above, or:

---

#!/bin/sh
cp /foo /bar && echo Success || echo Failed

This code will either echo

Success

or

Failed

depending on whether or not the cp command was successful. Look carefully at this; the construct is

command && command-to-execute-on-success || command-to-execute-on-failure

Only one command can be in each part. This method is handy for simple success / fail scenarios, but if you want to check on the status of the echo commands themselves, it is easy to quickly become confused about which && and || applies to which command. It is also very difficult to maintain. Therefore this construct is only recommended for simple sequencing of commands.

In earlier versions, I had suggested that you can use a subshell to execute multiple commands depending on whether the cp command succeeded or failed:

cp /foo /bar && ( echo Success ; echo Success part II; ) || ( echo Failed ; echo Failed part II )

But in fact, Marcel found that this does not work properly. The syntax for a subshell is:

( command1 ; command2; command3 )

The return code of the subshell is the return code of the final command (command3 in this example). That return code will affect the overall command. So the output of this script:

cp /foo /bar && ( echo Success ; echo Success part II; /bin/false ) || ( echo Failed ; echo Failed part II )

Is that it runs the Success part (because cp succeeded, and then - because /bin/false returns failure, it also executes the Failure part:

Success
Success part II
Failed
Failed part II

So if you need to execute multiple commands as a result of the status of some other condition, it is better (and much clearer) to use the standard if, then, else syntax.

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