Tracking down xdotool command/runtime errors

[Joe Consultant]

I just ran a script with an xdotool command in it where xdotool returned a status of 1.

 

How do I find out what it didn't like (without running an strace ;)   )?

This is particularly necessary for chained commands. Which part of the chain failed and why?

For the purposes of this question, it doesn't matter what the actual command was. I want to know how to deal with any such error.

Some commands have something like a -v (verbose) flag to get more information, but I didn't notice anything like that in man xdotool (-v just prints the xdotool version and exits).

In this particular instance, I then ran the same command outside my script and it worked fine, so there was something weird about where I ran it or when I ran it that caused the issue.