Sometimes we want to execute more than one command in one line. Fortunately, there are a few operators that allows us to do this depending on successful or not execution of previous commands. Let's have a look.

Checking command exit code

First, let's prepare two helper scripts - script_success.sh and script_failure.sh - that will exit with exit codes 0 and 1. Successful script will exit with 0 and failing one will exit with 1, because non-zero exit code indicates an error.

echo "success"
exit 0

echo "failure"
exit 1

Remember to make them executable using chmod +x command.

Next, check if exit codes are returned properly. We can check it using echo $? command, that gives us exit status of last executed script.

Running second command regardless of success

If you want to always run second command, use ; operator, for example:

echo "first"; echo "second"

To check if second command always runs, let's use our success and failure scripts

Running second command only if first succeded

For this, we will use && operator.

echo "first" && echo "second"

With this operator, we should only execute second command when running success script, let's check.

Running second command only if first failed

For this case we have || operator.

echo "first" || echo "second"

Now we should only see execution of second command when running failure script.

This operator can be very useful for error handling.

Using operators when running scripts in the background

To run script in the background use & operator.

./some-script.sh &

But how can we use these operators when running in the background? Let's modify our script_success.sh and script_failure.sh scripts to output to file.

echo "success" >> output
exit 0

echo "failure" >> output
exit 1

Using operators when running scripts in the background is simple. Let's assume we want to use && operator to run second command only if first succeded - we are going to use this syntax:

(first && second) &

Let's test this. First, let's run successful script first, so we should get both outputs in our file.

Now let's reverse, so first script fails. In that case we should only see first output in file. Before doing so, remember to remove output file with rm output.

And it's the same for ; and || operators.