Question

I have a function calling another, with unexpected results:

#!/bin/bash

function doSomething() {
    callee
    echo $?
    echo "It should go here!"
}

function callee() {
    cat line.txt | while read ln
    do
        echo $ln
        if [ 1 ] ;then
            { echo "This is callee" &&
            return 2; }
        fi  
    done
    echo "It should not go here!"
}


doSomething

Here is the result:

aa
This is callee
It should not go here!
0
It should go here!

Why does return act like break here? I want it to exit the callee function, not just break the loop.

Answer 1

This is because you are using a pipe into a while loop, which runs in a subshell (in Bash). You are returning from the subshell, not the function. Try this:

function callee() { 
    while read ln 
    do 
        echo $ln 
        if [ 1 ] ;then 
            echo "This is callee" 
            return 2;   
        fi   
    done  < line.txt
    echo "It should not go to here!" 
} 

Kill the cat!