It seems that RVM is the source of the problem. It overrides the popdbuiltin with a function:
$ type popd popd is a function popd () { builtin popd; if [[ -s "$PWD/.rvmrc" ]]; then source "$PWD/.rvmrc"; fi } So it looks like this is really a bug in RVM. Thanks for the help finding the cause of this one... without someone else able to reproduce, it made me take a second look at it ;-) - James On Sat, Dec 3, 2011 at 12:06 AM, Mike Frysinger <vap...@gentoo.org> wrote: > On Thursday 01 December 2011 19:01:50 james.cuze...@lyraphase.com wrote: > > Description: > > popd does not appear to return a nonzero exit status when the > directory > > stack is empty anymore. > > works for me: > $ echo $BASH_VERSION ; popd ; echo $? > 4.2.20(1)-release > bash: popd: directory stack empty > 1 > > as does your popall func > -mike >