I see what you are saying, and this behaviour persists to the current release (artful).
However by using the 'list' operator, your kinda always going to get some output as that's the action requested. I'm going to mark this as a Won't Fix for Ubuntu as I'd not want to change behaviour of ipset for Ubuntu alone; if you feel this should be changed, or maybe a new operator be introduced to check for the existence of a set then please report a bug to the upstream project (https://bugzilla.netfilter.org/). ** Changed in: ipset (Ubuntu) Status: New => Won't Fix -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1209347 Title: "ipset -quiet list [set_name]" should not output. To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ipset/+bug/1209347/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs