Is there a way to write a Bash function which aborts the whole execution, no matter how it is called?

Question

I was using the "exit 1" statement in my Bash functions to terminate the whole script and it worked fine:

function func() {    echo "Goodbye"    exit 1 } echo "Function call will abort" func echo "This will never be printed" 

But then I realized that it doesn't do the work when called like:

res=$(func) 

I understand that I created a subshell and "exit 1" aborts that subshell and not the primary one....

But is there a way to write a function which aborts the whole execution, no matter how it is called? I just need to get the real return value (echoed by the function).

Answer 1

What you could do, is register the top level shell for the TERM signal to exit, and then send a TERM to the top level shell:

#!/bin/bash trap "exit 1" TERM export TOP_PID=$$  function func() {    echo "Goodbye"    kill -s TERM $TOP_PID }  echo "Function call will abort" echo $(func) echo "This will never be printed" 

So, your function sends a TERM signal back to the top level shell, which is caught and handled using the provided command, in this case, "exit 1".