Check if script was started by another script [duplicate] - linux

Question

Let's assume I have 3 shell scripts:
script_1.sh
#!/bin/bash
./script_3.sh
script_2.sh
#!/bin/bash
./script_3.sh
the problem is that in script_3.sh I want to know the name of the caller script.
so that I can respond differently to each caller I support
please don't assume I'm asking about $0 cause $0 will echo script_3 every time no matter who is the caller
here is an example input with expected output
./script_1.sh should echo script_1
./script_2.sh should echo script_2
./script_3.sh should echo user_name or root or anything to distinguish between the 3 cases?
Is that possible? and if possible, how can it be done?
this is going to be added to a rm modified script... so when I call rm it do something and when git or any other CLI tool use rm it is not affected by the modification

Answer 1

Based on #user3100381's answer, here's a much simpler command to get the same thing which I believe should be fairly portable:
PARENT_COMMAND=$(ps -o comm= $PPID)
Replace comm= with args= to get the full command line (command + arguments). The = alone is used to suppress the headers.
See: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009604499/utilities/ps.html

Answer 2

In case you are sourceing instead of calling/executing the script there is no new process forked and thus the solutions with ps won't work reliably.
Use bash built-in caller in that case.
$ cat h.sh
#! /bin/bash
function warn_me() {
echo "$#"
caller
}
$
$ cat g.sh
#!/bin/bash
source h.sh
warn_me "Error: You did not do something"
$
$ . g.sh
Error: You did not do something
g.sh
$
Source

Answer 3

The $PPID variable holds the parent process ID. So you could parse the output from ps to get the command.
#!/bin/bash
PARENT_COMMAND=$(ps $PPID | tail -n 1 | awk "{print \$5}")

Answer 4

Based on #J.L.answer, with more in depth explanations, that works for linux :
cat /proc/$PPID/comm
gives you the name of the command of the parent pid
If you prefer the command with all options, then :
cat /proc/$PPID/cmdline
explanations :
$PPID is defined by the shell, it's the pid of the parent processes
in /proc/, you have some dirs with the pid of each process (linux). Then, if you cat /proc/$PPID/comm, you echo the command name of the PID
Check man proc

Answer 5

Couple of useful files things kept in /proc/$PPID here
/proc/*some_process_id*/exe A symlink to the last executed command under *some_process_id*
/proc/*some_process_id*/cmdline A file containing the last executed command under *some_process_id* and null-byte separated arguments
So a slight simplification.
sed 's/\x0/ /g' "/proc/$PPID/cmdline"

Answer 6

If you have /proc:
$(cat /proc/$PPID/comm)

Answer 7

Declare this:
PARENT_NAME=`ps -ocomm --no-header $PPID`
Thus you'll get a nice variable $PARENT_NAME that holds the parent's name.

Answer 8

You can simply use the command below to avoid calling cut/awk/sed:
ps --no-headers -o command $PPID
If you only want the parent and none of the subsequent processes, you can use:
ps --no-headers -o command $PPID | cut -d' ' -f1

Answer 9

You could pass in a variable to script_3.sh to determine how to respond...
script_1.sh
#!/bin/bash
./script_3.sh script1
script_2.sh
#!/bin/bash
./script_3.sh script2
script_3.sh
#!/bin/bash
if [ $1 == 'script1' ] ; then
echo "we were called from script1!"
elsif [ $1 == 'script2' ] ; then
echo "we were called from script2!"
fi