One possibility.

If the volume of information you wish to return is greater than can be contained in an int, but writing it to and reading it back from a file would present difficulties in the shell script, you could write the information in the name of an empty file.

If you choose (say) a prefix for the application and put the relavent info in the suffix, it should be fairly easy to find and process within you shell script.

eg. myapp.nm09 or myapp.op01....

Just a thought.

UpdateRemoved brain-fart repetition.