Preserve a failure status while an EXIT trap runs.
Bash Scripts: Capture the status immediately on entry to the trap before running cleanup commands.
set -euo pipefail
if (
trap 'status=$?; printf "cleanup:%s\n" "$status"' EXIT
exit 3
); then
status=0
else
status=$?
fi
printf 'exit:%s\n' "$status"Expected output EXAMPLE
cleanup:3 exit:3
Details
Requires Bash 4 or later. Save as snippet.sh and run bash snippet.sh in an empty working directory. Capture the status immediately on entry to the trap before running cleanup commands.
Tested on Ubuntu 24.04.5 LTS · · GNU bash, version 5.2.21(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) · bash 5.2.21-2ubuntu4; coreutils 9.4-3ubuntu6.3
Test inputs, results and environment
The exact published code ran in a dedicated Linux test container with prepared inputs. Snippet process uid 65534 with a read-only root filesystem and temporary working files. Networking disabled. Fixtures and output records are isolated from the application database. Testing covers this example and its stated checks, not every input, operating system, or runtime version. The Linux container shares its host's kernel; this is not a native Windows test.
- Architecture / host kernel
- x86_64 / 6.18.54.1-microsoft-standard-WSL2
- Snippet identity / locale
- uid=65534, gid=65534 (unprivileged process) / C.UTF-8
- Interpreter invocation
bash -euo pipefail -c <published code>- Container image ID
sha256:ec91410a8f6ec3e985830b5e3a0560306d36f8c1c5ccd91a6699abe707123fa3- Code SHA-256
2c96be2f2bdce56eca8ab2663ef97235bba9b777df940022dbbf40489600d4f6- Dependencies
- bash 5.2.21-2ubuntu4; coreutils 9.4-3ubuntu6.3
Test input setup
These are the prepared inputs used by the test harness. See Details above for the prerequisites and how to run this example.
# No input files required.
Observed standard output
cleanup:3 exit:3
Exit code: 0. Standard error: empty. Validation: Exact stdout comparison. System-dependent values above are one recorded run.