idioms for returning multiple values in shell scripting
- by Wang
Are there any idioms for returning multiple values from a bash function within a script?
http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/assortedtips.html describes how to echo multiple values and process the results (e.g., example 35-17), but that gets tricky if some of the returned values are strings with spaces in.
A more structured way to return would be to assign to global variables, like
foo () {
FOO_RV1="bob"
FOO_RV2="bill"
}
foo
echo "foo returned ${FOO_RV1} and ${FOO_RV2}"
I realize that if I need re-entrancy in a shell script I'm probably doing it wrong, but I still feel very uncomfortable throwing global variables around just to hold return values.
Is there a better way? I would prefer portability, but it's probably not a real limitation if I have to specify #!/bin/bash.
