or (1) - Linux Manuals

or: conditionally execute a command

NAME

or - conditionally execute a command

Synopsis

COMMAND1; or COMMAND2

Description

The or builtin is used to execute a command if the current exit status (as set by the last previous command) is not 0.

The or command does not change the current exit status.

The exit status of the last foreground command to exit can always be accessed using the $status variable.

Example

The following code runs the make command to build a program, if the build succeeds, the program is installed. If either step fails, make clean is run, which removes the files created by the build process

make; and make install; or make clean