i@mn0t.dev:~#

Why ?

It is very important to write code with function, even if sometimes I'm to lazy to do it, This Is Important !

Important, ok, but by essence, bash is built to return only interger return code between 0 and 255.

This is a great limitation because if we want to return, something like... True :troll:

or everything else than integer value, the return statement doesn't return anything.

We can try:

#!/bin/bash    

function fun_a(){
  i=0 
  for j in a b c; do
    ((i++)) 
  done
  return $i
}

fun_a
echo $?

function fun_b(){
  msg="Hello, $1 !"
  return $msg 
}

fun_a

fun_b "operator"

This will produce this result:

How ?

Like we see, the return statement is not agree with that !

Instead it is possible to use the command echo and simply call the function

with the command substitution $() (it parent's is ` `) and store it into a variable.

#!/bin/bash 
                                                                                                                                                                            
function fun_b(){
  msg="Hello, $1 !"
  echo $msg
}

res_b=$(fun_b "operator")
echo $res_b

For this result: