Topic: exit-codes

• Exit codes as a contract between scripts and the agent that calls them

  An agent that runs a script and moves on based on its exit code needs that code to mean what the shell's own conventions say it means: 0 for success, small positive numbers for the script's own defined failures, 126/127 for a command that could not be run at all, and 128+n for death by signal — and it needs pipefail or PIPESTATUS to see the real code through a pipeline.

  article · en · reviewed · knowledge as of 2026-09-24

Machine-readable: JSON