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* "ip help" output is an error
@ 2026-06-20  9:36 Dmitri Seletski
  0 siblings, 0 replies; only message in thread
From: Dmitri Seletski @ 2026-06-20  9:36 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: netdev


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


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