DCPM: return values

[Neil Williams]

Is it as easy as it would appear to report a return value from a perl script 
run from the command line?

I want to wrap a troublesome Perl script (you can all guess which project this 
is for) in a bash script. (It'll become clear, don't fret.)

If returnvalue == 0, all OK, exit bash script.
If return value <> 1 - immediately re-run script.

Reasons:
It's a workaround for a bug in the module that leaves the module unstable on 
refused connections (yes, it's my old friend Z39.50 again). There are two 
critical data objects/addresses - a manager reference and a connection 
handle. The manager reference can only be safely destroyed by calling the 
connection handle with the close() method. The problem comes that $conn comes 
back undefined in certain error states so I can't call $conn->close(); That 
leaves the memory in a shambles and the next $mgr-> operation (of any kind) 
leads to either a SIGPIPE or Illegal Seek. Handling the SIGPIPE isn't the 
answer because the module is truly unstable at this point.

However, there is a LOT of work for this script to perform and I cannot afford 
to let it just die() until the next cron slot comes around. When it DOES 
work, it can take a max of 6 minutes to complete. To be safe, cron is set at 
10 minutes. That leaves many times when it's bombed out after 30 seconds and 
there's no activity.

The die() handler currently drops me back to a last; statement and the MySQL 
connection is then closed.

Can I just use return $errno; and expect bash to pick it up? Well, no:
$ perl -e 'return 1;'
Can't return outside a subroutine

I haven't done a lot of conditional bash scripts - what is the best way to do 
it?

-- 

Neil Williams
=============
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