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From: TJ Luoma <tj@luo.ma>
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2011 14:09:49 -0400
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Message-ID: <CADjGqHsFmUL=X6oWktW+X2eNQjQpPVyPCZ1htX8hSY-xRsBPsA@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: a better way to 'die'?
To: Zsh Users <zsh-users@zsh.org>
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I have a function 'die' in my .zshenv that looks like this:

die () {

	echo "$@"

	if [ "$SHLVL" =3D "1" ]
	then
		return 1
	else
		exit 1
	fi
}

The purpose is so I can do things like:

[[ -e "/path/to/file.txt" ]] || die "Did not find /path/to/file.txt!"

to easily quit a loop (using return 1) or a script (using exit 1)
after echoing a message explaining where things broke down. (That
seems better than just throwing an 'exit 1' or 'return 1' and leaving
the user =E2=80=94 usually me =E2=80=94 to figure out where things failed.)

Is there a better way to do this?

TjL