Question

function get_arguments()
{
    read -p 'data : ' data
    read -p 'lambda: ' lambda
    echo $data $lambda 

}


 data,lambda=$(get_arguments)

But i am getting an error

data :  /home/wolfman/Downloads/data
lambda value: 2
./shell_script.sh: line 25: data,lambda,= /home/wolfman/Downloads/data: No such file or directory

But

1) Why is it even evaluating that whether that file exists or not.. its just a string??

2) what am i doing wrong 🙁

THanks

Answer 1

sh syntax does not allow that. But, the variables in the function are global, so you can just invoke the function and data and lambda will be set in the caller.

functions return an integer value, but they can print arbitrary data which can be read by the caller. For example, you could do:

get_arguments | { read data lambda; echo $data $lambda; }

The drawback is that the values are only available in that block. (The pipe creates a subshell, and the values read by read are only valid in that subshell.)