Check all commands exit code within a bash script

Question

Consider the case where I have a very long bash script with several commands. Is there a simple way to check the exit status for ALL of them easily. So if there's some failure I can show which command has failed and its return code.

I mean, I don't want to use the test for each one of them checks like the following:

my_command
if [ $status -ne 0 ]; then
    #error case
    echo "error while executing " my_command " ret code:" $?
    exit 1
fi

Is there a point of continuing once a command failed? Often than not tasks depend on each other. — Karoly Horvath, Oct 07 '15 at 11:05
No, I would like to stop the execution, cleanup and show a user friendly exit statement — rkachach, Oct 07 '15 at 12:20

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 07 '15 at 11:19

4

You can do trap "cmd" ERR, which invokes cmd when a command fails. However this solution has a couple of drawbacks. For example, it does not catch a failure inside a pipe.

In a nutshell, you are better off doing your error management properly, on a case by case basis.

answered Oct 07 '15 at 11:19

Hellmar Becker

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Is there some simple method in this case to show the failing command? – rkachach Oct 07 '15 at 13:26

score 3 · Answer 2 · 2015-10-07T13:08:00.370

3

One can test the value of $? or simply put set -e at the top of the script which will cause it to exit upon any command which errors.

#!/bin/sh

set -xe

my_command1

# never makes it here if my_command1 fails
my_command2

edited Oct 07 '15 at 13:08

answered Oct 07 '15 at 11:53

The way I program is to use `set -xe` for everything, and exit upon first error reporting all commands to the user. I updated the post to reflect this. – Oct 07 '15 at 13:09
If you want to hard wire a command to not trigger the program to exit upon error while under `set -xe` use: bad_command || true – Oct 07 '15 at 13:10

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited Oct 07 '15 at 12:35

2

You can write a function that launches:

function test {
    "$@"
    local status=$?
    if [ $status -ne 0 ]; then
        echo "error with $1" >&2
    fi
    return $status
}

test command1
test command2

edited Oct 07 '15 at 12:35

chepner

497,756
71
530
681

answered Oct 07 '15 at 11:17

Nullpointer

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1

this seems copied from https://stackoverflow.com/a/5195741/862225, no? If true, it would be nice to add a reference – Kostis Feb 11 '21 at 19:20

Check all commands exit code within a bash script

3 Answers3

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