xterm equivalent to -hold but only if process terminated with exit code >0

Question

I'm running a sequence of commands in xterm: xterm -sb -bg black -fg white -e "pdflatex --shell-escape -file-line-error-style | && biber | && pdflatex --shell-escape -interaction nonstopmode -file-line-error-style | && pdflatex --shell-escape -interaction nonstopmode -file-line-error-style | && evince |.pdf &" (the pipes are filled in with a filename by jEdit when the command is called, but it's not a jEdit issue).

If I call it with xterm -hold it stays open and I have to close it with the mouse or with Alt+F4. If I call it without -hold it goes and I can't see what the last command to successfully finish was.

So is there a way to either:

1. call xterm with a conditional hold or
2. close xterm with a command when it has been invoked with -hold (typing exit closes an xterm window that has been opened without -hold, but not one that has been opened with -hold.

Answer 1

If you can use bash then try this. set -o pipefail is key here - it causes bash to exit any command in a pipelined chain of commands with an exit code. With pipefail if any command in the chain fails the error status will always be zero (regardless of whether an error occured or not).

#!/bin/bash
set -o pipefail
xterm -sb -bg black -fg white -e ....  # without -hold option
wait $!                                # wait for exit status of command
if [ $? -ne 0 ];then                   # $? holds exit status, test if error occurred
        read -p "Error - press any key to exit "
fi
exit 0

Answer 2

I failed to get the solution given by suspectus to work, but inspired by that answer I got the following to work:

I now just execute xterm -sb -bg black -fg white -e "~/.jedit/macros/LaTeX/pdflatex.sh |" & from jEdit, pdflatex.sh is as follows:

pdflatex --shell-escape -file-line-error-style $1  
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then 
    read -p "Error - press any key to exit "
    exit 0
fi
biber $1  
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then 
    read -p "Error - press any key to exit "
    exit 0
fi
pdflatex --shell-escape -file-line-error-style -interaction nonstopmode $1 
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then 
    read -p "Error - press any key to exit "
    exit 0
fi
pdflatex --shell-escape -file-line-error-style -interaction nonstopmode $1 
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then 
    read -p "Error - press any key to exit "
    exit 0
fi
nohup evince $1.pdf  & 
exit 0