Want to get the exit status

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi All,
I am trying to create a zip file with all the txt files(these are in large number) in the current directory. I am able to do this operation sucessfully.

After this i want to get the status of the tar command executed and do accordingly. When i am trying with the below code, the status returned is for the entire operation i.e for find + tar. But what i want is only the status of the tar command.

can anyone help me with this.

#!/bin/sh

find . -name '*.txt' -print | tar -czf save1.tgz --files-from - > /dev/null 2>&1

RC=$?
if [ $RC -gt 0 ] ; then
   echo " tar operation failed with $RC "
else
   echo " tar operation passed with $RC "
fi
2

What made you to think that exit status is for entire operation and not for the last run command?

just try running any such combination of commands and check $? you will get your answer.

3

I can show you an example

My bad, actually question is i am getting a incorrect return status from the entire command.
lets change the above find+tar to

find ./abc -name '*.txt' -print | tar -czf save1.tgz --files-from - > /dev/null 2>&1

RC=$?
if [ $RC -gt 0 ] ; then
   echo " tar operation failed with $RC "
else
   echo " tar operation passed with $RC "
fi

paddu:/tmp/pradeep # ls abc
/bin/ls: prg: No such file or directory
paddu:/tmp/pradeep # ./a.sh
find: ./abc: No such file or directory
 tar operation passed with 0

Here the return status is 0 even the directory required doesnot exists.
How to get the correct status here

4

exit status contains the status of last command run.. in your case it was tar which executed without any issues means $? is 0..

You better check for directory inyour script with -d option of if..