From: "Ståle Z.H" <szerener@...>
Date: 2008-08-02T05:19:06+09:00
Subject: Re: Capturing shell command output and success?

On 1 Aug, 21:59, Kyle Schmitt <kyleaschm...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 1, 2008 at 2:54 PM, Ståle Z.H <szere...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Not quite sure if I understood you right, but you could probably do
> > something like this:
> > res = `command`  # note: ` not '
>
> > This executes 'command' and stores the output in res.
>
> Ståle,
>         The problem with that is that it doesn't indicate whether the
> command succeeded or failed.
>
>          By the way, %x{ls /tmp} is identical to `ls /tmp`, it's just
> easier to read :)
>
> --Kyle

The return value of the program is stored in $? as far as I can see. I
tested it on my laptop, and $? was set to 0 when the command succeeded
and 1 when it didn't. (Of course, the return value depends on the
program, but non-zero is generally considered failure.)