How to get the exit status a loop in bash

Question

I know how to check the status of the previously executed command using $?, and we can make that status using exit command. But for the loops in bash are always returning a status 0 and is there any way I can break the loop with some status.

#!/bin/bash
while true
do
        if [ -f "/test" ] ; then
                break ### Here I would like to exit with some status
        fi

done
echo $?  ## Here I want to check the status.

Answer 1

The status of the loop is the status of the last command that executes. You can use break to break out of the loop, but if the break is successful, then the status of the loop will be 0. However, you can use a subshell and exit instead of breaking. In other words:

for i in foo bar; do echo $i; false; break; done; echo $?  # The loop succeeds
( for i in foo bar; do echo $i; false; exit; done ); echo $? # The loop fails

You could also put the loop in a function and return a value from it. eg:

in() { local c="$1"; shift; for i; do test "$i" = "$c" && return 0; done; return 1; }