Interview › Scripting (Bash, Groovy)
How do you pass arguments to a function and return a value or status? [Basic]
Answer
Function arguments are accessed as $1, $2, and so on inside the function. A function returns a status with return, and returns data by printing to stdout, setting a variable by reference pattern, or writing to a file/stream.
Technical explanation
return is only for numeric exit status from 0 to 255; it is not a general data return mechanism.
Use command substitution to capture stdout from a function when returning a string.
For robust scripts, separate data on stdout from logs/errors on stderr.
Hands-on example
get_image_tag() { local branch="$1" local sha="$2" printf '%s-%s\n' "$branch" "$sha"}
tag=$(get_image_tag "main" "abc123")echo "tag=$tag"
validate_env() { [[ "$1" =~ ^(dev|stage|prod)$ ]]; }validate_env prod || exit 2
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