Zsh pipestatus

When you create a pipeline in the your preferred shell of choice, let's take bash as an example

ls | fd oop.py | echo "hello world"

You retrieve the exit code of the last command by running echo $? but what if you wanted to get the exit code for each of the commands in the pipeline?

Bash provides a convenient variable called PIPESTATUS which contains exactly that.

ls | fd oop.py | echo "hello world"
echo "${PIPESTATUS[@]}"
> 0 0 0

It works okay in bash but not in my zsh and that's because the variable is instead called pipestatus and you write it to the stdout stream by running echo $pipestatus.

In my shell though, only the last exit code was being returned which was unusual.

After a bit of digging on the interent, I found a Stack Exchange Post which explained that when another process perhaps is using a pipe, it can override pipestatus, mostly in a prompt related automation.

In my .zshrc config, I use powerlevel10K and other useful tidbits, which could be the cause of the problem

After backing up my config and then deleting every line, I tried it again.

ls | fd oop.py | echo "Hello World"; echo $pipestatus

and voila:

0 0 0

I am still not sure what is responsible per se but I'll do a bit more digging and document it when I figure it out.