In a Bash script, how can I exit the entire script if a certain condition occurs?

Question

I\'m writing a script in Bash to test some code. However, it seems silly to run the tests if compiling the code fails in the first place, in which case I\'ll just abort the

Answer 1

If you will invoke the script with source, you can use return where will be the script exit status (use a non-zero value for error or false). But if you invoke an executable script (i.e., directly with its filename), the return statement will result in a complain (error message "return: can only `return' from a function or sourced script").

If exit is used instead, when the script is invoked with source, it will result in exiting the shell that started the script, but an executable script will just terminate, as expected.

To handle either case in the same script, you can use

return  2> /dev/null || exit 

This will handle whichever invocation may be suitable. That is assuming you will use this statement at the script's top level. I would advise against directly exiting the script from within a function.

Note: is supposed to be just a number.