How to get the correct exit status of a shell

[Suman_7]

I am trying to execute a shell script a.ksh which returns an exit status of 1 since it fails.

I am calling this script a.ksh in another script b.ksh eg.

#script b.ksh
a.ksh

if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
echo failed
else echo success
fi

My problem is even through a.ksh fails when I call in my my script b.ksh I get $?=0 ( success ).

How do I get the correct exit status?

Thanks

[Mel Burslan]

I am not sure if this can solve your problem but instead of following your a.ksh with an 'if' statement, which eventually will complete successfully and set $? to 0, use something like this structure :

a.ksh
result=`echo $?`

if [ $result -ne 0 ]
then
echo failed
else
echo success
fi

hope this helps

[A. Clay Stephenson]

First of all, your a.ksh needs to explicitly exit with a value.

e.g.

exit ${STATUS}

Secondly, you need to immediately capture ${?}. It's best to assign it to a variable because the next shell command will alter ${?}.

a.ksh
STAT=${?}
date # just some dummy commands to illustrate
ls # my point

if [ ${STAT} -eq 0 ]
then
echo "Ok"
else
echo "a.ksh failed; status ${STAT}"
fi

[Suman_7]

Thanks a Lot!! That worked like magic!!

Can you please also tell me in UNIX how do I comment multiple lines.

Thanks

[Bharat Katkar]

Use HASH # to comment the line in the begining.

[Suman_7]

Yes but I need to comment some 30 lines, Is they any way in UNIX I can commnet line 1.. 30 without commenting all the 30 lines using #.

Thanks

[Mel Burslan]

open up your file in vi
go to the command mode by hitting esc
type the following command

:1,30s/^/#/

then hit enter
you will see # marks appear as the first character in first 30 lines of your file

don't forget to save your file before exiting

[Bharat Katkar]

No,it is not.
Uou have to use # in the begining for every line.

[Gary L. Paveza, Jr.]

Not really a method of "commenting" but you could surround the code to be commented with the following:

while false
do

done

Or any of a various things like this.

[Mike Stroyan]

You could put the lines in a 'here-document' to nowhere. Normally a 'here-document' is used to provide input to the stdin of a command. It starts with <
# one line comment
echo start
<<'*/'
a really
long
multiple line
comment
*/
echo finish

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Of course, this is up to you but I would avoid any methods like "here documents" or dummy while loops for comments. The very last thing I would want in source code is a comment section that I even have to ask myself "Now what was I doing here?". Of course, you could add a comment to explain your comment but that might be an infinitely recursive loop. The simple answer, and the one that would be recogized universally by all Shell programmers is the humble '#' character embedded in each and every comment line. Sometimes (and more often than not) simple really is best.