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Full Discussion: $? = Exit status variable
Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers $? = Exit status variable Post 302279233 by zaxxon on Thursday 22nd of January 2009 06:59:36 AM
Old 01-22-2009
Generally this depends on the binary/program you started before echoing $?. If it has an error message as output, then you can see this. Usually it's written to stderr or stdout, depending how the programmer has written it.

The ranges you posted is probably more a guideline.

If you want to write your own error message translation, just test with "if/then/fi", if $? is >=1 or <=254 and print out the error you want.
 

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LEARN ABOUT HPUX

annotate-output

ANNOTATE-OUTPUT(1)					      General Commands Manual						ANNOTATE-OUTPUT(1)

NAME

       annotate-output - annotate program output with time and stream

SYNOPSIS

       annotate-output [options] program [args ...]

DESCRIPTION

       annotate-output will execute the specified program, while prepending every line with the current time and O for stdout and E for stderr.

OPTIONS

       +FORMAT
	      Controls the timestamp format, as per date(1).  Defaults to "%H:%M:%S".

       -h, --help
	      Display a help message and exit successfully.

EXAMPLE

       $ annotate-output make
       21:41:21 I: Started make
       21:41:21 O: gcc -Wall program.c
       21:43:18 E: program.c: Couldn't compile, and took me ages to find out
       21:43:19 E: collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
       21:43:19 E: make: *** [all] Error 1
       21:43:19 I: Finished with exitcode 2

BUGS

       Since  stdout  and  stderr  are	processed  in parallel, it can happen that some lines received on stdout will show up before later-printed
       stderr lines (and vice-versa).

       This is unfortunately very hard to fix with the current annotation strategy.  A fix would involve  switching  to  PTRACE'ing  the  process.
       Giving nice a (much) higher priority over the executed program could however cause this behaviour to show up less frequently.

       The program does not work as well when the output is not linewise.  In particular, when an interactive program asks for input, the question
       might not be shown until after you have answered it.  This will give the impression that the annotated program has hung, while it has not.

SEE ALSO

       date(1)

SUPPORT

       This program is community-supported (meaning: you'll need to fix it yourself).  Patches are however appreciated, as is any feedback  (posi-
       tive or negative).

AUTHOR

       annotate-output	was written by Jeroen van Wolffelaar <jeroen@wolffelaar.nl> This manpage comes under the same copyright as annotate-output
       itself, read /usr/bin/annotate-output (or wherever you install it) for the details.

DEBIAN
								 Debian Utilities						ANNOTATE-OUTPUT(1)
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