Bash script wait for processes and get return code

I am trying to create a script which will start many background command.
For each background command I need to get the return code.

I have been trying the following script :

 #!/bin/bash
set -x
pid=()
return=()


for i in 1 2
do
 echo start $i
 ssh mysql "/root/test$i.sh" &
 pid[$i]=$!
done

for i in ${#pid[@]}
do
echo ${pid[$i]}
wait ${pid[$i]}
return[$i]=$?

if [ ${return[$i]} -ne 0 ]
then
  echo mail error
fi

done

echo ${return[1]}
echo ${return[2]}

My issue is during the wait loop, if the second pid finish before the first one, I’ll not be able to get the return code.

I know that I can run wait pid1 pid2, but with this command I can’t get the return code of all commands.

Any idea ?

Answers:

Thank you for visiting the Q&A section on Magenaut. Please note that all the answers may not help you solve the issue immediately. So please treat them as advisements. If you found the post helpful (or not), leave a comment & I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Method 1

The issue is more with your

for i in ${#pid[@]}

Which is for i in 2.

It should rather be:

for i in 1 2

or

for ((i = 1; i <= ${#pid[@]}; i++))

wait "$pid" will return the exit code of the job with bash (and POSIX shells, but not zsh) even if the job had already terminated when wait was started.

Method 2

You can do this by using a temporary directory.

# Create a temporary directory to store the statuses
dir=$(mktemp -d)

# Execute the backgrouded code. Create a file that contains the exit status.
# The filename is the PID of this group's subshell.
for i in 1 2; do
    { ssh mysql "/root/test$i.sh" ; echo "$?" > "$dir/$BASHPID" ; } &
done

# Wait for all jobs to complete
wait

# Get return information for each pid
for file in "$dir"/*; do
    printf 'PID %d returned %dn' "${file##*/}" "$(<"$file")"
done

# Remove the temporary directory
rm -r "$dir"

Method 3

A generic implementation without temporary files.

#!/usr/bin/env bash

## associative array for job status
declare -A JOBS

## run command in the background
background() {
  eval $1 & JOBS[$!]="$1"
}

## check exit status of each job
## preserve exit status in ${JOBS}
## returns 1 if any job failed
reap() {
  local cmd
  local status=0
  for pid in ${!JOBS[@]}; do
    cmd=${JOBS[${pid}]}
    wait ${pid} ; JOBS[${pid}]=$?
    if [[ ${JOBS[${pid}]} -ne 0 ]]; then
      status=${JOBS[${pid}]}
      echo -e "[${pid}] Exited with status: ${status}n${cmd}"
    fi
  done
  return ${status}
}

background 'sleep 1 ; false'
background 'sleep 3 ; true'
background 'sleep 2 ; exit 5'
background 'sleep 5 ; true'

reap || echo "Ooops! Some jobs failed"

Method 4

Stéphane’s answer is good, but I would prefer

for i in ${!pid[@]}
do
    wait ${pid[i]}
    return[i]=$?
    unset "pid[$i]"
done

which will iterate over the keys of the pid array, regardless of which entries still exist, so you can adapt it, break out of the loop, and re-start the whole loop and it’ll just work. And you don’t need consecutive values of i to begin with.

Of course, if you’re dealing with thousands of processes then perhaps Stépane’s approach would be fractionally more efficient when you have a non-sparse list.

All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0