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Accepted
Jason Axelson
Asked: 2010-08-02 14:58:14 +0800 CST

How to assign a variable in bash without using $?

  • 772

Is there any easier/more elegant way to assign a return value to a variable? So far I've been doing something like:

some_command_to_run
VAR_TO_SET=$?

But I would much prefer to have it all on one line and preferably without using the $? variable. Does anyone know how?

bash

3 Answers

  1. The question I have is "Why?". It's the facility provided by Bash to accomplish that function.

    However, you can do this (in addition to what Kyle and Gilles showed):

    do_something && do_on_success || do_on_failure
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  2. That's all there is. If you really want it on one line, you can write some_command_to_run; VAR_TO_SET=$?. You could make it a two-liner function, but I don't recommend it because it will make your scripts less readable (one more thing to learn to be able to understand your code).

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  3. Best Answer

    That is all I know as well. However, if you are just doing this repeatily to see if I command was sucessful with something like:

    if [[ $? -ne 0 ]]; then
   ...
fi

    You can actually just test a command directory like:

    if ! mkdir foo; then
   ...
fi

    You might have already know that, but figured it might help you :-)

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