Aborting a shell script if any command returns a non-zero value

by

Add this to the beginning of the script:

set -e

This will cause the shell to exit immediately if a simple command exits with a nonzero exit value. A simple command is any command not part of an if, while, or until test, or part of an && or || list.

See the bash(1) man page on the “set” internal command for more details.

I personally start almost all shell scripts with “set -e”. It’s really annoying to have a script stubbornly continue when something fails in the middle and breaks assumptions for the rest of the script.

More Related Contents:

  1. When should I wrap quotes around a shell variable?
  2. What’s the magic of “-” (a dash) in command-line parameters?
  3. What does $@ mean in a shell script?
  4. Better way to rename files based on multiple patterns
  5. Forcing bash to expand variables in a string loaded from a file
  6. Linux: copy and create destination dir if it does not exist
  7. What is the difference between using `sh` and `source`?
  8. Setting environment variables in Linux using Bash
  9. What is the difference between “#!/usr/bin/env bash” and “#!/usr/bin/bash”?
  10. Does “argument list too long” restriction apply to shell builtins?
  11. Given two directory trees, how can I find out which files differ by content? [closed]
  12. How to sort a file in-place?
  13. How to run a shell script on a Unix console or Mac terminal?
  14. Using the passwd command from within a shell script
  15. Is it OK to use the same input file as output of a piped command?
  16. When to wrap quotes around a shell variable?
  17. How do you normalize a file path in Bash?
  18. Linux/Unix command to determine if process is running?
  19. Running shell script in parallel
  20. Difference between shell and environment variables
  21. What’s the point of eval/bash -c as opposed to just evaluating a variable?
  22. Need to remove the count from the output when using “uniq -c” command
  23. How do you run a script on login in *nix?
  24. How do I write standard error to a file while using “tee” with a pipe?
  25. Syntax error in shell script with process substitution
  26. Extract file basename without path and extension in bash [duplicate]
  27. How to check if a file is empty in Bash?
  28. Should PATH contain directories or full paths to binaries?
  29. Execute a command without keeping it in history [closed]
  30. Multithreading in Bash [duplicate]

Leave a Comment