Repeatedly run a shell command until it fails?

Question

while takes a command to execute, so you can use the simpler

while ./runtest; do :; done

This will stop the loop when ./runtest returns a nonzero exit code (which is usually indicative of failure).

To further simplify your current solution though, you should just change your untilfail script to look like this:

#!/bin/bash

while "$@"; do :; done

And then you can call it with whatever command you’re already using:

untilfail ./runTest --and val1,val2 -o option1 "argument two"