Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi all,
I have a script file that has numerous linking commands (ln -s) and currently there is no checking to see if the linking is successful or not and I need to implement something that checks if any of the linking failed and report a failure.

The method I can think of is a small function that checks the return status of the ln command and report failure if the exit code is not zero. But in thsi method I will have to call the function after every ln command, is there a better way for me to handle this case? Any help is appreciated.

Thx

You don't really need to right a function. Just using the shell built-in in variable $? for the return status of the last comman. In korn shell it would just be

Code:

ls -s $filename

if [[ $? -ne 0 ]]  then

do something

fi

Hi Jacksona2, yes that is what I was referring too it can be either in a function or your snippet. In the method you mentioned we will have to type that code after every link, however putting that in a function is better in my opinion.

But back to my main question, is there a better way to implement linking failure in a script with lot of linking commands? Any help is appreciated. Thx

I am not really sure what you mean, you would have to supply some sample code. You could just at you linking piece to the same function that does the testing so you do it all in one function.

and run

link_function(<source> <target)

but maybe I am not getting you requirements properly