Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi,

I have written a bash shell script. In order to create a log file when I run the script, as well as print the output to the terminal, I call it in the following manner:

Code:

my_shell_script 2>&1 | tee my_log_file

This seems to work well. However, I have put some statements in the script to catch errors and exit. I have noticed that when the script exits, the

Code:

$?

variable is always 0, regardless of the exit status specified. However, when I call the script the following way that doesn't happen:

Code:

my_shell_script > my_log_file

Any ideas on why that's happening?

Thanks a lot.

Mike

You're getting the return value of tee, not the return value of your script.

If you want to watch the logfile while it's generated without using tee, you can do

Code:

$ ./myscript > logfile &
$ tail -f logfile

Depending on your shell you might also get the exit status of other things in the pipe chain with ${PIPESTATUS[0]} etc

Thank you very much!