[bash] Get exit code for command in bash/ksh

Below is the fixed code:

#!/bin/ksh
safeRunCommand() {
  typeset cmnd="$*"
  typeset ret_code

  echo cmnd=$cmnd
  eval $cmnd
  ret_code=$?
  if [ $ret_code != 0 ]; then
    printf "Error : [%d] when executing command: '$cmnd'" $ret_code
    exit $ret_code
  fi
}

command="ls -l | grep p"
safeRunCommand "$command"

Now if you look into this code few things that I changed are:

  • use of typeset is not necessary but a good practice. It make cmnd and ret_code local to safeRunCommand
  • use of ret_code is not necessary but a good practice to store return code in some variable (and store it ASAP) so that you can use it later like I did in printf "Error : [%d] when executing command: '$command'" $ret_code
  • pass the command with quotes surrounding the command like safeRunCommand "$command". If you dont then cmnd will get only the value ls and not ls -l. And it is even more important if your command contains pipes.
  • you can use typeset cmnd="$*" instead of typeset cmnd="$1" if you want to keep the spaces. You can try with both depending upon how complex is your command argument.
  • eval is used to evaluate so that command containing pipes can work fine

NOTE: Do remember some commands give 1 as return code even though there is no error like grep. If grep found something it will return 0 else 1.

I had tested with KSH/BASH. And it worked fine. Let me know if u face issues running this.

Examples related to bash

Comparing a variable with a string python not working when redirecting from bash script Zipping a file in bash fails How do I prevent Conda from activating the base environment by default? Get first line of a shell command's output Fixing a systemd service 203/EXEC failure (no such file or directory) /bin/sh: apt-get: not found VSCode Change Default Terminal Run bash command on jenkins pipeline How to check if the docker engine and a docker container are running? How to switch Python versions in Terminal?

Examples related to unix

Docker CE on RHEL - Requires: container-selinux >= 2.9 What does `set -x` do? How to find files modified in last x minutes (find -mmin does not work as expected) sudo: npm: command not found How to sort a file in-place How to read a .properties file which contains keys that have a period character using Shell script gpg decryption fails with no secret key error Loop through a comma-separated shell variable Best way to find os name and version in Unix/Linux platform Resource u'tokenizers/punkt/english.pickle' not found

Examples related to ksh

How can I find a file/directory that could be anywhere on linux command line? Shell Script: How to write a string to file and to stdout on console? Send password when using scp to copy files from one server to another Reading file line by line (with space) in Unix Shell scripting - Issue How to get the second column from command output? Get exit code for command in bash/ksh Check if file exists and whether it contains a specific string In a unix shell, how to get yesterday's date into a variable? How to set the From email address for mailx command? How to mkdir only if a directory does not already exist?

Examples related to exit

Ruby - ignore "exit" in code Difference between return 1, return 0, return -1 and exit? Android: Quit application when press back button How to exit a function in bash break/exit script How to use sys.exit() in Python exit application when click button - iOS How to properly exit a C# application? What is the command to exit a Console application in C#? Get exit code for command in bash/ksh