dcm2niix will return an exit status to allow scripts to determine if a conversion was successful. Following Unix convention, the value value 0 is used for EXIT_SUCCESS. In contrast, any non-zero result suggests an error. In the Unix terminal and with shell scripts, the variable $? reports the most recent exit status. Here is an example of a successful conversion:
>dcm2niix ~/dcm
Chris Rorden's dcm2niiX version v1.0.20200331 Clang11.0.0 (64-bit MacOS)
Found 2 DICOM file(s)
Convert 2 DICOM as ~/dcm/dcm_ax_asc_6 (64x64x35x2)
Conversion required 0.015866 seconds (0.012676 for core code).
>echo $?
0
Below is a list of possible return values from running dcm2niix.
| Exit Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 0 | Success |
| 1 | Unspecified error (see console output for details) |
| 2 | No DICOM images found in input folder |
| 3 | Exit from report version (result of dcm2niix -v) |
| 4 | Corrupt DICOM file (Irrecoverable error during conversion) |
| 5 | Input folder invalid |
| 6 | Output folder invalid |
| 7 | Unable to write to output folder (check file permissions) |
| 8 | Converted some but not all of the input DICOMs |
| 9 | Unable to rename files (result of dcm2niix -r y ~/in) |