CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bashshell
Knight71
Knight71

Reputation: 2949

Return exactly one string/value from shell script

I have read qns regarding return output from a function in Stack Overflow. All the post says to use echo 

#!/bin/bash

 function myown()
   {
       echo "i dont need this in retval"

       echo "Need this alone in retVal"
   }

  retVal=$(myown)

  echo $retVal

o/p: i dont need this in retval Need this alone in retVal

expected: Need this alone in retVal

Is there a way to flush the previous output in echo. Or I need to parse all the echoed output to get my return value ? Is there simple way to do this ? Because I may have echos that are useful to debug and echo to return a value.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 4022

Answers (1)

Vaughn Cato
Vaughn Cato

Reputation: 64308

Echo output to stderr for debugging:

#!/bin/bash

function myown()
{
    echo "i dont need this in retval" >&2

    echo "Need this alone in retVal"
}

retVal=$(myown)

echo "result: $retVal"

When you run the script, you will see

i dont need this in retval
result: Need this alone in retVal

Upvotes: 5

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