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It is annoying to me that return 0 only works when a file is sourced and when doing a sub-shell you need to exit 0. I'm trying to create a function whose code will be evaluated in the parent scope so that it can do:

return 0 2>/dev/null exit 0

This is the simplest solution in the parent's scope because if return fails then exit will work & it covers all cases. But it only works of course when coded in the parent scope because a return inside a function scope will obviously return from just the function.

How is it possible to do this? I prefer simplicity, but it may not be possible for this problem

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One solution is this. Say we want to bail out of a script with exit code 42, whether it is sourced or whether it is run in its own process:

return 42 || exit 42

I.e. try return 42. If that fails, try exit 42, which is not expected to fail.

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  • I suppose it is not possible to combine these commands into say a function or inheritable alias? I'm guessing it is not, so I'm likely to accept your answer I'm just curious. Commented Jul 10, 2023 at 16:07
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    Aliases are not inherited via the environment. They can be defined in a .rc file, but that's more for personal customization. If I had to write a complex shell application consisting of multiple scripts where I wanted some common aliases, I'd have an environment variable called foobar_common (where foobar is the name of my application). This would hold the absolute path name of a file to be sourced, containing common definitions that are not inheritable. The top-level script would pass that to other scripts, which would source it using . "$foobar_common". Commented Jul 10, 2023 at 17:05
  • Alright, thanks for you help! Commented Jul 10, 2023 at 18:11

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