CODEWITHSUNDEEP
cshtcsh
John McGehee
John McGehee

Reputation: 10339

Cannot set tcsh exit status using a variable

I usually use bash, but in this case I must use tcsh. To my surprise, I cannot use a variable containing the exit status as the argument to exit:

[bash] tcsh
[tcsh] set status=2
[tcsh] echo $status
2
[tcsh] exit $status
exit
[bash] echo $?
0

A literal argument to exit does work as expected:

[bash] tcsh
[tcsh] exit 2
exit
[bash] echo $?
2

What on earth is going on here?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1550

Answers (1)

John McGehee
John McGehee

Reputation: 10339

$status is a built-in C shell variable containing the exit status of the previous command. Try echoing $status twice and you can see that tcsh changes the value of $status to 0, the exit status of the first echo command:

[bash] tcsh
[tcsh] set status=2
[tcsh] echo $status
2
[tcsh] echo $status
0

The solution is to merely use a different variable name that is not a C shell built-in variable:

[bash] tcsh
[tcsh] set result=2
[tcsh] echo $result
2
[tcsh] exit $result
exit
[bash] echo $?
2

Upvotes: 4

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