_exec is my own wrapper to call any command. It's called only from within a larger bash script from other functions. I'm clear that it's my solely responsibility to check what I feed into that _exec function and I'm taking care that any data from outside has to be securely examined - which needs extra care when done within bash.

Always complete command as first argument as shown in the _delete_compatible example. (No Redirect within the given command line. No variables to be substituted. Ready to run command lines).

It should be generic, but I assume I'll never process more than 50 Kilobytes.

That _fatal thing is working completely fine. But if you're curious: ESHELLERR is a global variable containing an integer which itself represents an index to an associative array with a descriptive message(format string) regarding ESHELLERR. _fatal can be called with variable args. Here are some supplements to _fatal:

Code:

ESHELLERR=64
declare -A ERRMSG
ERRMSG[$ESHELLERR]="Shell execution error. EXITCODE: %s ERRMSG: %s COMMAND: %s"
export ESHELLERR ERRMSG

function _fatal {
        ERROR_CODE=$1
        if [[ -n "$ERROR_CODE" && -n "${ERRMSG[$ERROR_CODE]}" ]] ;then
                if [ -n "$2" ] ; then
                        shift
                        MSG="$(printf "${ERRMSG[$ERROR_CODE]}" "$@")"
                else
                        MSG="${ERRMSG[$ERROR_CODE]}"
                fi
                _log "FATAL: $MSG"
                echo "LC_SYSTEM:ERROR $MSG"
                exit $ERROR_CODE
        else
                ERROR_CODE=${ERROR_CODE:-$ERRUNKNWN}
                _log "FATAL: Unkown Error occurred"
                echo "LC_SYSTEM:ERROR Unkonwn Error occurred"
                exit $ERROR_CODE
        fi
}