Question

I’d like to return an exit code from a BASH script that is called within another script, but could also be called directly. It roughly looks like this:

#!/bin/bash
dq2-get $1
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
  echo "ERROR: ..."
  # EXIT HERE
fi
# extract, do some stuff
# ...

Now in the line EXIT HERE the script should exit and return exit code 1. The problem is that

• I cannot use return, because when I forget to source the script instead of calling it, return will not exit, and the rest of the script will be executed and mess things up.
• I cannot use exit, because this closes the shell.
• I cannot use the nice trick kill -SIGINT $$, because this doesn’t allow to return an exit code.

Is there any viable alternative that I have overlooked?

Answer 1

You can use x"${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" == x"$0" to test if the script was sourced or called (false if sourced, true if called) and return or exit accordingly.