bash script: repeat command if it returns an error

Solution 1:

I found the basis for this elegant loop elsewhere on serverfault. Turns out there is no need save the exit code, as you can test directly on the command itself;

until ncftpput -DD -z -u user -p password remoteserver /remote/dir /local/file; do
  echo Tansfer disrupted, retrying in 10 seconds...
  sleep 10
done

Solution 2:

Almost. You are probably better saving the return value as a variable so that you can pre-set it before the loop. Otherwise it will be affected by the last-run command.

You might also want to sling a sleep in there to stop it respawning too quickly.

RET=1
until [ ${RET} -eq 0 ]; do
    ncftpput -DD -z -u user -p password remoteserver /remote/dir /local/file
    RET=$?
    sleep 10
done

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Solution 3:

Bit hacky but my solution was to just create a bash function which runs itself if it exits with a failure

function retry { the_command_you_want && echo "success" || (echo "fail" && retry) }; retry