Bug #1376 client utilities don't return useful exit status for usage errors

• Submitted: 23 Sep 2003 5:05
• Modified: 25 Sep 2003 23:58
• Reporter: Tim Bunce
• Status: Closed
• Category: MySQL Server: Command-line Clients
• Severity: S3 (Non-critical)
• CPU Architecture: Any

[23 Sep 2003 5:05] Tim Bunce

Description:
MySQL client utilities don't return useful exit status for usage errors such as bad options.

How to repeat:
$ mysql --foobar
mysql: unrecognized option `--foobar'
...
$ echo $?
0

$ mysqladmin --foobar
 ...
$ echo $?
0

Suggested fix:
Exit with non-zero status for invalid command line options. Trivial change.

[23 Sep 2003 5:11] Tim Bunce

Forgot to mention that the problem also includes invalid options that are read from configuration files (e.g. ~/.my.cnf).

I ran into this problem after I added an option (local-infile=1) to ~/.my.cnf

The option works fine for newer mysql clients, but older ones failed *and did not return a non-zero exit status*. This caused some batch jobs to fail in obscure ways that took time to track down.

[23 Sep 2003 5:15] Tim Bunce

You can cancel this bug report.

I've just confirmed that v4.0.12 clients do return a non-zero exit status.
(For various reasons I wasn't able to do that at the time I reported it.)

Sorry for troubling you.

[25 Sep 2003 23:58] Alexander Keremidarski

Tim,

Thank you for taking your time to investigate further and resolve this issue after reporing it.