On Mon, May 19, 2014 at 10:39:59AM -0700, Mark Ferrell wrote: > I'm sorry, but the lack of consistency still sounds like it is a bug > in bash. The behaviour I would expect is functionally equivalent to > 'do_cmd > /dev/null 2>&1 || err_handler'. Further more, this IS the > behaviour seen if the command being executed is NOT a > builtin/function.
I won't take sides on that particular issue, but as a workaround, could you use something like this? exec 8>&1 9>&2 # Save original stdout & stderr for use in error handler err() { echo "${1:-Error}" >&9; }