Bash tip: idiom to get the first error code from a pipe

When writing a bash script, often times you'll end up with something like this:

real_command | filter_stuff | prettify | do_something_else

The problem arises when you try to figure out if your command succeeded or not. If you `echo $?` you'll get the return code for the last chain in the pipe. You don't really care about the output value of do_something_else, do you?

I haven't found a solution I really like to this problem, but this idiom is handy:

out=`real_command` && echo $out | filter_stuff | prettify | do_something_else
echo $?

Now $? will hold the value of real_command, and you can actually use it to diagnose the real problem.