Treat Exit Status as the Command Handshake
Use exit status to decide whether shell commands and scripts should continue.
Exit status is the shell contract. Standard output is what a command says. Exit status is how it reports whether the operation worked. What Zero Means A status of zero conventionally means success. Nonzero means failure, partial failure, misuse, missing input, or another program-specific condition. Read command docs when the distinction matters. Why && And || Work cmd1 && cmd2 means run the second command only if the first succeeds. cmd1 || recovery means run the recovery path only if the first fails. That makes status the control flow of shell work. The Pipeline Trap Pipelines connect output streams, but…
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