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From: Dmitri Seletski <drjoms@gmail.com>
To: netdev@vger.kernel.org
Subject: "ip help" output is an error
Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2026 10:36:31 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <62f09fe8-899c-4d22-b7a1-67e2745613df@gmail.com> (raw)


Hello iproute2 maintainers,

I am reporting an inconsistency regarding the exit status of the ip help 
command.

Current Behavior:
When running ip help, the command prints the help documentation to 
stdout, but exits with a non-zero status (error). This causes issues in 
shell scripts that rely on exit codes for control flow.

Steps to reproduce:
bash

# This returns "FAIL" because the exit code is non-zero
if ip help > /dev/null; then
     echo "SUCCESS"
else
     echo "FAIL"
fi

Expected Behavior:
Since the command successfully performs the requested task (displaying 
help information) and does not encounter a system error, it should 
return an exit code of 0.

Context:
This behavior breaks standard Bash logic for automation. For example:
ip help && echo "This will not execute"

"ip help |grep br" - this will bring no result.

Current version tested: iproute2-6.19.0

Thank you for your time and for maintaining this tool.

Regards,
Dmitri Seletski


             reply	other threads:[~2026-06-20  9:36 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 2+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2026-06-20  9:36 Dmitri Seletski [this message]
2026-06-21 15:21 ` "ip help" output is an error Stephen Hemminger

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