How to make a variable from a subshell available in the parent shell

I’ve written a quick-and-dirty script to time some reports from a web service:

BASE_URL='http://example.com/json/webservice/'
FIRST=1
FINAL=10000

for report_code in $(seq 1 $FINAL); do
  (time -p response=$(curl --write-out %{http_code} --silent -O ${BASE_URL}/${report_code}) ) 2> ${report_code}.time

  echo $response  # <------- this is out of scope!  How do I fix that?
  if [[ $response = '404' ]]; then
    echo "Deleting report # ${report_code}!"
    rm ${report_code}
  else
    echo "${report_code} seems to be good!"
  fi
done

I need to wrap the time command in a subshell so I can redirect its output, but that makes the value of $response unavailable to the parent shell. How do I get around this problem?

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Answers:

Method 1

Method 2

Answers:

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Method 1

You can’t bring a variable’s value from a subshell to its parent, not without doing some error-prone marshalling and cumbersome communication.

Fortunately, you don’t need a subshell here. Redirection only requires command grouping with { … }, not a subshell.

{ time -p response=$(curl --write-out '%{http_code}' --silent -O "${BASE_URL}/${report_code}"); } 2> "${report_code}.time"

(Don’t forget double quotes around variable substitutions.)

Method 2

_{Fellow U&L users: Before downvoting my answer for using C-style with main() function, please visit this link: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/313561/85039 Using main functions in scripts is a common practice, used by many professionals in the field.}

As Gilles pointed out, subshells cannot make variables available outside of their environment. But let’s approach this problem from another angle – if you write your script in functions, it’s possible to declare variable as local and that can be edited.

From bash 4.3’s manual, local description:

…When local is used within a function, it causes the variable name to have a visible scope restricted to that function and its children…

Example:

#!/bin/bash

outter()
{
    for i in $(seq 1 3)
    do
        var=$i
    done
}

main()
{
    local var=0
    outter
    echo $var
}
main "<a href="https://getridbug.com/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection" class="__cf_email__" data-cfemail="b296f2">[email protected]</a>"
$ ./testscript.sh                                                                                                        
3

As you can see after 3 iterations of the looping function, the variable is modified.

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

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