Returning value from called function in a shell script

Question

I want to return the value from a function called in a shell script. Perhaps I am missing the syntax. I tried using the global variables. But that is also not working. The c

Answer 1

I think returning 0 for succ/1 for fail (glenn jackman) and olibre's clear and explanatory answer says it all; just to mention a kind of "combo" approach for cases where results are not binary and you'd prefer to set a variable rather than "echoing out" a result (for instance if your function is ALSO suppose to echo something, this approach will not work). What then? (below is Bourne Shell)

# Syntax _w (wrapReturn)
# arg1 : method to wrap
# arg2 : variable to set
_w(){
eval $1
read $2 <

as in (yep, the example is somewhat silly, it's just an.. example)

getDay(){
  d=`date '+%d'`
  [ $d -gt 255 ] && echo "Oh no a return value is 0-255!" && BAIL=0 # this will of course never happen, it's just to clarify the nature of returns
  return $d
}

dayzToSalary(){
  daysLeft=0
  if [ $1 -lt 26 ]; then 
      daysLeft=`expr 25 - $1`
  else
     lastDayInMonth=`date -d "`date +%Y%m01` +1 month -1 day" +%d`
     rest=`expr $lastDayInMonth - 25`
     daysLeft=`expr 25 + $rest`
  fi
  echo "Mate, it's another $daysLeft days.."
}

# main
_w getDay DAY # call getDay, save the result in the DAY variable
dayzToSalary $DAY