Warnaud's Wiki

When you want to save values between functions of your bash script, there are several ways:

1. Use the same variable name and don't create them as “local” to a function

   function myfunc()
   {
       myresult='some value'
   }
    
   myfunc
   echo $myresult

   Quite Dangerous

2. Let you function handle arguments:

   function myfunc()
   {
       local  __resultvar=$1
       local  myresult='some value'
       eval $__resultvar="'$myresult'"
   }
    
   myfunc result
   echo $result

   
   

Reference: http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/return-values-bash-functions