Guys any tips on printing a certain error message to stderr and exiting should a command fail within a ksh script? I'm trying to null some output files.

Touch isn't suitable as i need to null them.
print "" > file isn't suitable as i need to check elsehere for if they are 0bytes or not.

I've tried these below examples and none work correctly. I don't want to have to put a check after each command as :-

Code:

if [[ $? -ne 0 ]];then
   print "error blah blah" >&2
   exit 2
fi

Below tests don't work correctly. I'm guessing its spawning something.

Code:

OUTFILE=/tmp/out

# Null outfiles. Security already checked

> ${OUTFILE} || print "ERROR: blah blah \n" >&2 ; exit 2   #doesnt work

> ${OUTFILE} || (print "ERROR: blah blah \n" >&2 ; exit 2 )  #doesn't work

> ${OUTFILE} || (print "ERROR: blah blah \n" >&2 && exit 2) #doesnt work

if [[ -n "$(> ${OUTFILE} 2>&1)" ]];then
     print "ERROR: blah blah \n" >&2
     exit 2
fi    # doesnt work

Any ideas or alternatives?