# bash: abort script on any error
For the longest of time it’s been my understanding that set -e in Bash causes a script to terminate if any single command of the script fails, which is also exactly what it does, in most cases.
However, when you start using functions things change a bit. Consider the following example:
$ cat basherr
#!/bin/bash
set -e
function run() {
false # <- this should cause the script to fail
echo ", world!"
}
output=$(run)
echo "Hello$output" # <- this should never be executed
$ basherr ; echo $?
Hello, world!
0
I was recently working on a script that had a couple of functions and I wanted the script to abort if any single command failed.
After some digging I found the -E option to set, which according to the documentation does the following:
If set, any trap on ERR is inherited by shell functions, command substitutions, and commands executed in a subshell environment. The ERR trap is normally not inherited in such cases.
Armed with this newfound knowledge I replaced set -e with set -E and a custom trap handler for ERR:
set -E
trap "exit $?" ERR
and lo and behold:
$ basherr ; echo $?
1
I could have saved myself some headache by reading the documentation of set more thouroughly as it does outline exceptions where set -e won’t do what one might think.