Re: no exit status available when a command doesn't exist or fails in pipe to grep

[Ed Morton]

On 9/9/2021 11:29 AM, Andrew J. Schorr wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 09, 2021 at 10:52:57AM -0500, Ed Morton wrote:
> > Since POSIX doesn't define "succesful" in the context of calling
> > close() it can mean whichever we want it to mean and in the above
> > example I'd hope we'd go with "b" and get results from calling
> > close() like:
> >
> > 0 (success) = the action we took caused the command to close, or
> > N (failure) = or our attempt to close it failed for reason N (which
> > includes why it was already closed if that was the case)
> >
> > since that would be much more useful than just 0 if the command is
> > closed or N if our attempt to close it failed and lose the
> > information about why it was already closed before we tried to close
> > it if that was the case.
> Stupid question: why are you running gawk in --posix mode if you're
> going to depend on gawk-specific behavior?
I wanted to see what it'd output since the POSIX standard is vague. I'm 
not relying on gawk-specific behavior, I'm using it for best error 
detection/reporting if/when it's available in a portable script (see the 
`cmdsub()` function at the bottom of 
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/69074464/awk-append-text-to-specific-line-with-systemexternal-programm-substitution/69074979#69074979).

    Ed.
>   If you're developing a solution
> that will depend on gawk's implementation choices, why use --posix?
> Without --posix, gawk already does what you want.
>
> Regards,
> Andy