This is part 26 of a series on how to approach bash programming in a way that’s safer and more structured than your basic script.

See part 1 if you want to catch the series from the start.

Last time, we discussed passing hashes as arguments to functions. This time, let’s discuss returning values from functions.

Functions in bash already have return values, of course. I’ve been calling them return codes because they really are just values to indicate success or failure.

The return statement returns a number from 0-255 which can be tested for truth or made part of an expression via the $? expansion. Since 0 indicates success, the truthiness of a return is opposite what you would get in other languages, as well as in arithmetic expressions. 0 is true and any other (positive) number is false.

The problem is that bash deals in strings, and a function which returns a byte isn’t very useful for that. We’d like it to be able to return strings, arrays or hashes.

Since a function can’t return anything other than a return code, there are three ways to deal with returning a string as well, by using the following:

Stdout

External commands typically put their output to stdout for the user to see. In scripts, it’s common to take such output and process it into data for the script to use in its logic. Command substitution is the typical way to absorb output:

textfiles=$(find . -name '*.txt')

If we write our own functions to be used this way, all we need to do is echo output:

myfunc () {
  echo "this is my return value"
}

The good part about this is that it’s simple to do:

# myfunc's output is the first argument to another_func
another_func $(myfunc)

The other good part is that using stdout works with pipelines, because pipelines connect stdout to stdin. In that case, the command substitution is unnecessary, you just use the pipe character to take the output from the command on the left and feed it to the input of the command on the right.

One bad part about using stdout is that sometimes, if your function is complex, some commands you use in the function may generate some unexpected output. Since one output is the same as another to stdout, it can adulturate your intended return value. Most of the time that’s not an issue, but it can surprise you.

The other bad part about it is that command substitution is not very performant. Command substitution creates a subshell, which involves creating a new process that mirrors the existing shell. While it may not look expensive, it’s a lot more than just returning a value. In fact, it’s very expensive for such a small thing.

While performance probably isn’t the first thing on your mind if you’re using bash, we’d still like our scripts to not be slower than they need to be. Especially since they’re already going to be slower than other languages.

Global Variables

I’ve discouraged the use of global variables because they require the caller and the function to agree on a variable name. That’s bad because it ties namespaces together and can cause naming conflicts and subtle bugs.

Most bash scripts do it anyway because you can’t return hashes and arrays easily, and globals are the simplest way to get around that.

Even so, globals have some other disadvantages, such as the fact that they can’t be used to return values from subshells. Subshells are a copy of the parent shell and go away once they’re done. Since pipelines invoke subshells for each part of the pipeline, the same is true of them as well. You can’t return global values from subshells nor, by extension, any part of a pipeline.

Subshells notwithstanding, you can at least do one thing to address the issue of namespace conflicts. If you adopt the convention of picking a specific global variable to always return your values, you can at least know that you won’t have conflicts with any other variables, which is especially true of any code which follows the same convention.

In some languages such as ruby and perl, the special single-underscore variable holds the last result. Underscore already has a special purpose in bash, so I choose the convention of a double-underscore as a return variable: __.

Since it may be used in any function call it has to be treated as ephemeral, just like the special $? expansion. It may, and probably will, change from line to line, so in order to use its value, it needs to immediately be saved off into another variable. If you adopt this as a practice, the same will apply for you.

So while this does use the global namespace, it avoids the concern of naming conflicts to the greatest possible extent. You also get the performance of not using a subshell, so it’s a suitable technique when you need your code to be fast(ish).

The three things you need to remember for this technique to work are:

  • always save the value from __ immediately if you plan to use it

  • you probably don’t want to declare __ as a local variable

  • don’t try use it in subshells or, by extension, pipelines

Indirection

This is my preferred method of returning hashes and arrays, since it’s easy to work with them in the function, even though you have to namespace your local variables.

The technique is to declare a local variable in the caller and pass it to the function by name. The function uses indirection to dereference the variable name and pass the value back to the caller by setting that variable.

The only concern with this is namespace collisions, although this time it’s between the local variables in the called function and the return variable’s name. Any local variable in the function could accidentally mask the return variable if they happen to have the same name, defeating the indirection.

Since the function doesn’t know what name the caller will pass, it has to namespace all of its locals. I like to namespace my locals with a trailing underscore in this situation.

This method also doesn’t work with subshells and pipelines.

In recent versions of bash, the best way to accomplish this is to declare the recipient of a return variable name with local -n. The -n option allows you to initialize the variable with the name of another variable. From then on, anything you do to the local variable is reflected in the named variable:

myfunc () {
  local -n reference_=$1

  reference_=$2
}

myfunc one 1
echo $one

myfunc will set the variable one to 1, via reference_.

Por Que No Los Tres?

If you like the flexibility of being able to choose from any of these methods it is possible to marry them. Here’s an example which converts a string to all uppercase:

to_upper () {
  local string_=${1^^}  # force uppercase
  local ref_=${2:-}     # return variable name, if provided

  # adds "-v $ref_" if ref_ is present
  printf ${ref_:+-v$IFS$ref_} $string_
}

In this case, instead of local -n, we’re using printf -v to return the value. This method still requires local namespacing. It works well for strings, but isn’t as flexible as local -n for working with arrays or hashes.

To use it with stdout, simply don’t provide a variable name:

result=$(to_upper "lowercase string")

To use it with the global __, pass it that name:

to_upper "lowercase string" __
do_something_with $__

Of course, this is piggybacking on the indirect method since we’re using printf -v __ instead of setting __ directly. Normally you wouldn’t have to namespace the local variables and could just work with __ by its name. It’s only because we’re trying to combine methods that we’re setting __ indirectly.

To use it with indirection to a local variable, declare that name and pass the name in:

myfunc () {
  local result

  to_upper "lowercase string" result
}

Returning Arrays via Strings

If not using indirection, you can still return array values via strings, the same as passing them in as arguments. Here it is with the global method:

myfunc () {
  local myarray=( one two three )

  __=${myarray[*]}
}

myfunc
array=( $__ )

As I mentioned when discussing data types, I don’t convert a string variable type to an array variable type because it can’t be changed back without being unset. I always treat the global __ variable as a string variable, so here the splat expansion is used to turn the array value into a string.

Returning Hashes

Hashes may also be returned as a string. There isn’t a method like the splat expansion for hashes, so instead we have to use the rep function we created earlier. Here it is with the stdout method (remember that rep already uses stdout, so it can be the last call in the function):

myfunc () {
  local -A myhash=( [zero]=0 [one]=1 [two]=2 )

  rep myhash
}

declare -A hash=$(myfunc)

Before we’re done, let’s redo the rep function to use the return methods based on how it’s called:

describe rep
  it "generates a representation of a hash on stdout"
    declare -A samples=(
      [zero]=0
      [one]=1
    )
    result=$(rep samples)
    assert equal '([one]="1" [zero]="0" )' $result
  ti

  it "generates a representation of a hash in a named variable"
    declare -A samples=(
      [zero]=0
      [one]=1
    )
    rep samples result
    assert equal '([one]="1" [zero]="0" )' $result
  ti
end_describe
rep () {
  local ref_=${2:-}
  local expression_

  _err_=0
  expression_="^declare -[a|A] [^=]+='(.*)'$"
  [[ $(declare -p $1) =~ $expression_ ]] || {
    _err_=1
    return
  }
  printf ${ref_:+-v$IFS$ref_} ${BASH_REMATCH[1]}
}

Continue with part 27 - traps