Error handling in Bash

Question

What is your favorite method to handle errors in Bash? The best example of handling errors I have found on the web was written by William Shotts, Jr at http://www.linuxcommand.org.

He suggests using the following function for error handling in Bash:

#!/bin/bash

# A slicker error handling routine

# I put a variable in my scripts named PROGNAME which
# holds the name of the program being run.  You can get this
# value from the first item on the command line ($0).

# Reference: This was copied from <http://www.linuxcommand.org/wss0150.php>

PROGNAME=$(basename $0)

function error_exit
{

#   ----------------------------------------------------------------
#   Function for exit due to fatal program error
#       Accepts 1 argument:
#           string containing descriptive error message
#   ---------------------------------------------------------------- 

    echo "${PROGNAME}: ${1:-"Unknown Error"}" 1>&2
    exit 1
}

# Example call of the error_exit function.  Note the inclusion
# of the LINENO environment variable.  It contains the current
# line number.

echo "Example of error with line number and message"
error_exit "$LINENO: An error has occurred."

Do you have a better error handling routine that you use in Bash scripts?

Answer 1

This function has been serving me rather well recently:

action () {
    # Test if the first parameter is non-zero
    # and return straight away if so
    if test $1 -ne 0
    then
        return $1
    fi

    # Discard the control parameter
    # and execute the rest
    shift 1
    "$@"
    local status=$?

    # Test the exit status of the command run
    # and display an error message on failure
    if test ${status} -ne 0
    then
        echo Command \""$@"\" failed >&2
    fi

    return ${status}
}

You call it by appending 0 or the last return value to the name of the command to run, so you can chain commands without having to check for error values. With this, this statement block:

command1 param1 param2 param3...
command2 param1 param2 param3...
command3 param1 param2 param3...
command4 param1 param2 param3...
command5 param1 param2 param3...
command6 param1 param2 param3...

Becomes this:

action 0 command1 param1 param2 param3...
action $? command2 param1 param2 param3...
action $? command3 param1 param2 param3...
action $? command4 param1 param2 param3...
action $? command5 param1 param2 param3...
action $? command6 param1 param2 param3...

<<<Error-handling code here>>>

If any of the commands fail, the error code is simply passed to the end of the block. I find it useful when you don't want subsequent commands to execute if an earlier one failed, but you also don't want the script to exit straight away (for example, inside a loop).

Answer 2

I prefer something really easy to call. So I use something that looks a little complicated, but is easy to use. I usually just copy-and-paste the code below into my scripts. An explanation follows the code.

#This function is used to cleanly exit any script. It does this displaying a
# given error message, and exiting with an error code.
function error_exit {
    echo
    echo "$@"
    exit 1
}
#Trap the killer signals so that we can exit with a good message.
trap "error_exit 'Received signal SIGHUP'" SIGHUP
trap "error_exit 'Received signal SIGINT'" SIGINT
trap "error_exit 'Received signal SIGTERM'" SIGTERM

#Alias the function so that it will print a message with the following format:
#prog-name(@line#): message
#We have to explicitly allow aliases, we do this because they make calling the
#function much easier (see example).
shopt -s expand_aliases
alias die='error_exit "Error ${0}(@`echo $(( $LINENO - 1 ))`):"'

I usually put a call to the cleanup function in side the error_exit function, but this varies from script to script so I left it out. The traps catch the common terminating signals and make sure everything gets cleaned up. The alias is what does the real magic. I like to check everything for failure. So in general I call programs in an "if !" type statement. By subtracting 1 from the line number the alias will tell me where the failure occurred. It is also dead simple to call, and pretty much idiot proof. Below is an example (just replace /bin/false with whatever you are going to call).

#This is an example useage, it will print out
#Error prog-name (@1): Who knew false is false.
if ! /bin/false ; then
    die "Who knew false is false."
fi

Answer 3

That's a fine solution. I just wanted to add

set -e

as a rudimentary error mechanism. It will immediately stop your script if a simple command fails. I think this should have been the default behavior: since such errors almost always signify something unexpected, it is not really 'sane' to keep executing the following commands.

Answer 4

Inspired by the ideas presented here, I have developed a readable and convenient way to handle errors in bash scripts in my bash boilerplate project.

By simply sourcing the library, you get the following out of the box (i.e. it will halt execution on any error, as if using set -e thanks to a trap on ERR and some bash-fu):

There are some extra features that help handle errors, such as try and catch, or the throw keyword, that allows you to break execution at a point to see the backtrace. Plus, if the terminal supports it, it spits out powerline emojis, colors parts of the output for great readability, and underlines the method that caused the exception in the context of the line of code.

The downside is - it's not portable - the code works in bash, probably >= 4 only (but I'd imagine it could be ported with some effort to bash 3).

The code is separated into multiple files for better handling, but I was inspired by the backtrace idea from the answer above by Luca Borrione.

To read more or take a look at the source, see GitHub:

https://github.com/niieani/bash-oo-framework#error-handling-with-exceptions-and-throw

Answer 5

I use the following trap code, it also allows errors to be traced through pipes and 'time' commands

#!/bin/bash
set -o pipefail  # trace ERR through pipes
set -o errtrace  # trace ERR through 'time command' and other functions
function error() {
    JOB="$0"              # job name
    LASTLINE="$1"         # line of error occurrence
    LASTERR="$2"          # error code
    echo "ERROR in ${JOB} : line ${LASTLINE} with exit code ${LASTERR}"
    exit 1
}
trap 'error ${LINENO} ${?}' ERR

Answer 6

Another consideration is the exit code to return. Just "1" is pretty standard, although there are a handful of reserved exit codes that bash itself uses, and that same page argues that user-defined codes should be in the range 64-113 to conform to C/C++ standards.

You might also consider the bit vector approach that mount uses for its exit codes:

 0  success
 1  incorrect invocation or permissions
 2  system error (out of memory, cannot fork, no more loop devices)
 4  internal mount bug or missing nfs support in mount
 8  user interrupt
16  problems writing or locking /etc/mtab
32  mount failure
64  some mount succeeded

OR-ing the codes together allows your script to signal multiple simultaneous errors.