breaking from a script

[hostux]

hi guys, can you tell me how to break out of a script and return an error if the command 'adduser bob' returns the error 'adduser: user bob already exists'? Thanks

[tadman]

You might want to check the return value of your system call. Normal execution should not return any errors. A failure may be documented.

if (my $error = system("adduser","foo"))
{
     die "Trouble brewing\n";
}

[derby]

check out system. Normally most unix commands will return a 0 upon success and something else upon failure. You can investigate the return value of system (or $?) shifted 8 places in order to see the exit status of the command ($? >> 8).

-derby

[krujos]

To exit from the script you can use  exit $errorcode;
I would use a reg ex to match that string i guess. Or check the error level of the adduser command (which is probably a better option for what your trying to do). Do this using perls built in system call.If you try to add a user that already exists it probably wont exit with 0.


 
if (!system("adduser bob")) { 
  exit 0;
} else {
  exit 122
}

[hostux]

hi again, excuse me for my complete stupidity, but how can i integrate that into my script? where would i print the error message in this code?

[krujos]

if (!system("adduser bob")) { 
  print "system returned 0 everything is ok";
  exit 0;
} else {
  print "there was an error, exit and return 127 to the os";
  exit 122;
}