Bash: run command2 if command1 fails

Question

I want to do something like this:

if cmd1 && cmd2
echo success
else
echo epic fail
fi

How should I do it?

Answer 1

These should do what you need:

cmd1 && cmd2 && echo success || echo epic fail

or

if cmd1 && cmd2; then
    echo success
else
    echo epic fail
fi

Answer 2

Petr Uzel is spot on but you can also play with the magic $?.

$? holds the exit code from the last command executed, and if you use this you can write your scripts quite flexible.

This questions touches this topic a little bit, Best practice to use $? in bash? .

cmd1 
if [ "$?" -eq "0" ]
then
  echo "ok"
else
  echo "Fail"
fi

Then you also can react to different exit codes and do different things if you like.