Checking Bash exit status of several commands efficiently

I have a set of scripting functions that I use extensively on my Red Hat system. They use the system functions from /etc/init.d/functions to print green [ OK ] and red [FAILED] status indicators.

You can optionally set the $LOG_STEPS variable to a log file name if you want to log which commands fail.

Usage

step "Installing XFS filesystem tools:"
try rpm -i xfsprogs-*.rpm
next

step "Configuring udev:"
try cp *.rules /etc/udev/rules.d
try udevtrigger
next

step "Adding rc.postsysinit hook:"
try cp rc.postsysinit /etc/rc.d/
try ln -s rc.d/rc.postsysinit /etc/rc.postsysinit
try echo $'\nexec /etc/rc.postsysinit' >> /etc/rc.sysinit
next

Output

Installing XFS filesystem tools:        [  OK  ]
Configuring udev:                       [FAILED]
Adding rc.postsysinit hook:             [  OK  ]

Code

#!/bin/bash

. /etc/init.d/functions

# Use step(), try(), and next() to perform a series of commands and print
# [  OK  ] or [FAILED] at the end. The step as a whole fails if any individual
# command fails.
#
# Example:
#     step "Remounting / and /boot as read-write:"
#     try mount -o remount,rw /
#     try mount -o remount,rw /boot
#     next
step() {
    echo -n "$@"

    STEP_OK=0
    [[ -w /tmp ]] && echo $STEP_OK > /tmp/step.$$
}

try() {
    # Check for `-b' argument to run command in the background.
    local BG=

    [[ $1 == -b ]] && { BG=1; shift; }
    [[ $1 == -- ]] && {       shift; }

    # Run the command.
    if [[ -z $BG ]]; then
        "$@"
    else
        "$@" &
    fi

    # Check if command failed and update $STEP_OK if so.
    local EXIT_CODE=$?

    if [[ $EXIT_CODE -ne 0 ]]; then
        STEP_OK=$EXIT_CODE
        [[ -w /tmp ]] && echo $STEP_OK > /tmp/step.$$

        if [[ -n $LOG_STEPS ]]; then
            local FILE=$(readlink -m "${BASH_SOURCE[1]}")
            local LINE=${BASH_LINENO[0]}

            echo "$FILE: line $LINE: Command \`$*' failed with exit code $EXIT_CODE." >> "$LOG_STEPS"
        fi
    fi

    return $EXIT_CODE
}

next() {
    [[ -f /tmp/step.$$ ]] && { STEP_OK=$(< /tmp/step.$$); rm -f /tmp/step.$$; }
    [[ $STEP_OK -eq 0 ]]  && echo_success || echo_failure
    echo

    return $STEP_OK
}

You can write a function that launches and tests the command for you. Assume command1 and command2 are environment variables that have been set to a command.

function mytest {
    "$@"
    local status=$?
    if (( status != 0 )); then
        echo "error with $1" >&2
    fi
    return $status
}

mytest "$command1"
mytest "$command2"

What do you mean by "drop out and echo the error"? If you mean you want the script to terminate as soon as any command fails, then just do 

set -e    # DON'T do this.  See commentary below.

at the start of the script (but note warning below). Do not bother echoing the error message: let the failing command handle that. In other words, if you do:

#!/bin/sh

set -e    # Use caution.  eg, don't do this
command1
command2
command3

and command2 fails, while printing an error message to stderr, then it seems that you have achieved what you want. (Unless I misinterpret what you want!)

As a corollary, any command that you write must behave well: it must report errors to stderr instead of stdout (the sample code in the question prints errors to stdout) and it must exit with a non-zero status when it fails.

However, I no longer consider this to be a good practice. set -e has changed its semantics with different versions of bash, and although it works fine for a simple script, there are so many edge cases that it is essentially unusable. (Consider things like: set -e; foo() { false; echo should not print; } ; foo && echo ok The semantics here are somewhat reasonable, but if you refactor code into a function that relied on the option setting to terminate early, you can easily get bitten.) IMO it is better to write:

 #!/bin/sh

 command1 || exit
 command2 || exit
 command3 || exit

or 

#!/bin/sh

command1 && command2 && command3

Tags:

Exit

Bash

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