I realize the fact but I don't know why:
cat abc | echo $?
if abc does not exist, but above command still return 0. Anyone knows the theory about why?
The reason why it must be this way is that a pipeline is made of processes running simultaneously. cat's exit code can't possibly be passed to echo as an argument because arguments are set when the command begins running, and echo begins running before cat has finished.
echo doesn't take input from stdin, so echo on the right side of a pipe character is always a mistake.
UPDATE:
Since it is now clear that you are asking about a real problem, not just misunderstanding what you saw, I tried it myself. I get what I think is the correct result (1) from a majority of shells I tried (dash, zsh, pdksh, posh, and bash 4.2.37) but 0 from bash 4.1.10 and ksh (Version JM 93u+ 2012-02-29).
I assume the change in bash's behavior between versions is intentional, and the 4.1.x behavior is considered a bug. You'd probably find it in the changelog if you looked hard enough. Don't know about ksh.
csh and tcsh (with $status in place of $?) also say 0, but I bet nobody cares about that.
People with bigger shell collections are invited to test:
for sh in /bin/sh /bin/ksh /bin/bash /bin/zsh ...insert more shells here...; do
echo -n "$sh "
$sh -c 'false;true|echo $?'
done
It does not have anything to do with cat abc, but with the previous command you executed. So the code you get when doing cat abc | echo $? is telling if the previous command in your history was successful or not.
From man bash:
Special Parameters
? - Expands to the exit status of the most recently executed foreground pipeline.
So when you do:
cat abc | echo $?
The echo $? refers to the previous command you used, not cat abc.
Example
$ cat a
hello
$ echo $?
0
$ cat aldsjfaslkdfj
cat: aldsjfaslkdfj: No such file or directory
$ echo $?
1
So
$ cat a
$ cat a | echo $?
0
$ cat aldsjfaslkdfj
cat: aldsjfaslkdfj: No such file or directory
$ cat a | echo $?
1
echo $? will give output of previous command which you have executed before not output of piped command. So, you will always get echo $? as 0 even if command failed before pipe.
You pipe the output from 'cat abc' to 'echo $?' which is not what you want.
You want to echo the exit code of 'cat'
cat abc; echo $?
is what you want. Or simply write it in two lines if you can.
Related
I was writing few scripts and suddenly stroke me to think the following commands in CSH and BASH shells.
In csh shell
$ echo $?BASH
0
$ echo $?HOME
1
$ echo $? home
0 home
In bash shell
$ echo $?BASH
0BASH
$ echo $?HOME
0HOME
$ echo $? home
0 home
Someone explain the above behaviour. I know the echo $? prints the exit status of the last command but if added with some string then how its working?
If you review the documentation csh indicates:
$?name
${?name}
Substitutes the string 1 if the variable name is set, 0 if it is not.
$?0
Substitutes 1 if the current input file name is known, 0 if it is not.
http://www.mkssoftware.com/docs/man1/csh.1.asp
be careful, $? is diferent to $?name
My shell a.sh script like this:
#!/bin/sh
# $ret maybe from database or pipe,whatever it likes:
ret="cnt
1"
echo -e $ret
and calling in different ways produces different results:
$ sh a.sh
cnt 1
$ source a.sh
cnt
1
$
How can I get the same output under sh and source?
How can I get the same output under sh and source?
you need to quote echo. – fedorqui
thanks #fedorqui. that means echo -e "$ret" – tonylee0329
Exactly, quoting echo's argument is the way to adjust the difference between the two shells' echos.
I would like to run a bash script and be able to see the command line used to launch it:
sh myscript.sh arg1 arg2 1> output 2> error
in order to know if the user used the "std redirection" '1>' and '2>', and therefore adapt the output of my script.
Is it possible with built-in variables ??
Thanks.
On Linux and some unix-like systems, /proc/self/fd/1 and /proc/self/fd/2 are symlinks to where your std redirections are pointing to. Using readlink, we can query if they were redirected or not by comparing them to the parent process' file descriptor.
We will however not use self but $$ because $(readlink /proc/"$$"/fd/1) spawns a new shell so self would no longer refer to the current bash script but to a subshell.
$ cat test.sh
#!/usr/bin/env bash
#errRedirected=false
#outRedirected=false
parentStderr=$(readlink /proc/"$PPID"/fd/2)
currentStderr=$(readlink /proc/"$$"/fd/2)
parentStdout=$(readlink /proc/"$PPID"/fd/1)
currentStdout=$(readlink /proc/"$$"/fd/1)
[[ "$parentStderr" == "$currentStderr" ]] || errRedirected=true
[[ "$parentStdout" == "$currentStdout" ]] || outRedirected=true
echo "$0 ${outRedirected:+>$currentStdout }${errRedirected:+2>$currentStderr }$#"
$ ./test.sh
./test.sh
$ ./test.sh 2>/dev/null
./test.sh 2>/dev/null
$ ./test.sh arg1 2>/dev/null # You will lose the argument order!
./test.sh 2>/dev/null arg1
$ ./test.sh arg1 2>/dev/null >file ; cat file
./test.sh >/home/camusensei/file 2>/dev/null arg1
$
Do not forget that the user can also redirect to a 3rd file descriptor which is open on something else...!
Not really possible. You can check whether stdout and stderr are pointing to a terminal: [ -t 1 -a -t 2 ]. But if they do, it doesn't necessarily mean they weren't redirected (think >/dev/tty5). And if they don't, you can't distinguish between stdout and stderr being closed and them being redirected. And even if you know for sure they are redirected, you can't tell from the script itself where they point after redirection.
I have some code that I would like to have the $? variable of.
VARIABLE=`grep "searched_string" test.log | sed 's/searched/found/'`
Is there any way to test if this entire line (rather than just the sed command) was completed successfully? If I try the following code right after it:
if [ "$?" -ne 0 ]
then
echo 1
exit
fi
it doesn't run even if the grep part of the statement fails.
Could someone show how to resolve this issue?
Use the
echo ${PIPESTATUS[#]}
will print out the array of exit-statuses of all commands.
$ ls | grep . | wc -l
28
$ echo ${PIPESTATUS[#]}
0 0 0
but
$ ls | grep nonexistentfilename | wc -l
0
$ echo ${PIPESTATUS[#]}
0 1 0 #the grep returns 1 - pattern not found
or
$ ls nonexistentfilename | grep somegibberish | wc -l
ls: nonexistentfilename: No such file or directory
0
$ echo ${PIPESTATUS[#]}
1 1 0 #ls and grep fails
for exact command status
echo ${PIPESTATUS[1]} #for the grep
also here is the
set -o pipefail
from the docs
pipefail
If set, the return value of a pipeline is the value of the
last (rightmost) command to exit with a non-zero status, or zero if
all commands in the pipeline exit successfully. This option is
disabled by default.
$ ls nonexistentfile | wc -c
ls: nonexistentfile: No such file or directory
0
$ echo $?
0
$ set -o pipefail
$ ls nonexistentfile | wc -c
ls: nonexistentfile: No such file or directory
0
$ echo $?
1
EDIT based on the comment
Youre probably tried the next:
VARIABLE=$(grep "searched_string" test.log | sed 's/searched/found/')
echo "${PIPESTATUS[#]}"
Of course, this can't work because the whole $(...) part runs in the subshell (another process) and therefore any variable what is created is lost when the subshell exits. (at the ))
You should put the whole PIPESTATUS mechanism into $(...) like next:
variable=$(
grep "searched_string" test.log | sed 's/searched/found/'
# do something with PIPESTATUS
# you should not echo anythig to stdout (because will be captured into $variable)
# you can echo on stderr - e.g.
echo "=${PIPESTATUS[#]}=" >&2
)
Also, the second line of the comment is an solution, eg:
var_with_status=$(command | commmand2 ; echo ":DELIMITER:${PIPESTATUS[#]}")
now, the $var_with_status will contain not only the result of the command | command2 but the PIPESTATUS too, delimited with some unique delimiter, so you can extract it...
Also, the set -o pipefail will indicate the result - if you don't need exact place of the fail.
Also you can write the PIPESTATUS in some temp-file (in the subshell) and the parent can read it and delete the temp-file...
Also is possible print the PIPESTATUS into different file-descriptors in the subshell and read this descriptor in the parent shell, but....
... beware do not fall into the XY problem, where you will make extremelly complicated script, only because you don't want change the logic of the processing.
e.g. you can always break you script into safe parts, like:
var1=$(grep 'str' test.log)
#check the `$var1` and do something with the error indicated with `$?`
var2=(sed '....' <<<"$var1")
#check the `$var2` and do something with the error indicated with `$?`
#and so on
simple enough?
So, ask yourself - do you really need mungling with how to get the PIPESTATUS form an subshell?
Ps: don't use uppercase variable names. could interfere with some environment variables and causes hard-to-debug problems..
Let's assume I have 3 shell scripts:
script_1.sh
#!/bin/bash
./script_3.sh
script_2.sh
#!/bin/bash
./script_3.sh
the problem is that in script_3.sh I want to know the name of the caller script.
so that I can respond differently to each caller I support
please don't assume I'm asking about $0 cause $0 will echo script_3 every time no matter who is the caller
here is an example input with expected output
./script_1.sh should echo script_1
./script_2.sh should echo script_2
./script_3.sh should echo user_name or root or anything to distinguish between the 3 cases?
Is that possible? and if possible, how can it be done?
this is going to be added to a rm modified script... so when I call rm it do something and when git or any other CLI tool use rm it is not affected by the modification
Based on #user3100381's answer, here's a much simpler command to get the same thing which I believe should be fairly portable:
PARENT_COMMAND=$(ps -o comm= $PPID)
Replace comm= with args= to get the full command line (command + arguments). The = alone is used to suppress the headers.
See: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009604499/utilities/ps.html
In case you are sourceing instead of calling/executing the script there is no new process forked and thus the solutions with ps won't work reliably.
Use bash built-in caller in that case.
$ cat h.sh
#! /bin/bash
function warn_me() {
echo "$#"
caller
}
$
$ cat g.sh
#!/bin/bash
source h.sh
warn_me "Error: You did not do something"
$
$ . g.sh
Error: You did not do something
g.sh
$
Source
The $PPID variable holds the parent process ID. So you could parse the output from ps to get the command.
#!/bin/bash
PARENT_COMMAND=$(ps $PPID | tail -n 1 | awk "{print \$5}")
Based on #J.L.answer, with more in depth explanations, that works for linux :
cat /proc/$PPID/comm
gives you the name of the command of the parent pid
If you prefer the command with all options, then :
cat /proc/$PPID/cmdline
explanations :
$PPID is defined by the shell, it's the pid of the parent processes
in /proc/, you have some dirs with the pid of each process (linux). Then, if you cat /proc/$PPID/comm, you echo the command name of the PID
Check man proc
Couple of useful files things kept in /proc/$PPID here
/proc/*some_process_id*/exe A symlink to the last executed command under *some_process_id*
/proc/*some_process_id*/cmdline A file containing the last executed command under *some_process_id* and null-byte separated arguments
So a slight simplification.
sed 's/\x0/ /g' "/proc/$PPID/cmdline"
If you have /proc:
$(cat /proc/$PPID/comm)
Declare this:
PARENT_NAME=`ps -ocomm --no-header $PPID`
Thus you'll get a nice variable $PARENT_NAME that holds the parent's name.
You can simply use the command below to avoid calling cut/awk/sed:
ps --no-headers -o command $PPID
If you only want the parent and none of the subsequent processes, you can use:
ps --no-headers -o command $PPID | cut -d' ' -f1
You could pass in a variable to script_3.sh to determine how to respond...
script_1.sh
#!/bin/bash
./script_3.sh script1
script_2.sh
#!/bin/bash
./script_3.sh script2
script_3.sh
#!/bin/bash
if [ $1 == 'script1' ] ; then
echo "we were called from script1!"
elsif [ $1 == 'script2' ] ; then
echo "we were called from script2!"
fi