Retrieve Qshell Exit Status in CL Programs

Hey, Ted:

In the article, "Using Grep to Search Source Physical Files", which published in the November 13, 2002, issue of Midrange Guru, you presented a way to extract Qshell's return code when running a Qshell utility in a CL program. I know a better way.

I've been using this routine to get the return code from the QSH command in CL.

DCL &MSGDTA    *CHAR   4 
DCL &MSGID     *CHAR   7 
DCL &RTNCODE   *DEC  (10 0) 

QSH CMD(whatever) 

RCVMSG     MSGTYPE(*LAST) RMV(*NO) MSGDTA(&MSGDTA)  + 
             MSGID(&MSGID) 
IF (&MSGID = 'QSH0005') CHGVAR &RTNCODE %BIN(&MSGDTA) 

Now &RTNCODE has the decimal value of the return code.

-- Ken

My thanks to Ken for this tip.

I did some digging and found that Qshell sends message QSH0005 after it executes a command. If you look at that message, which is in message file QSHELL/QZSHMSGF, you'll see that the return code is a four-byte integer value in the field data.

-- Ted

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