set -e is disabled inside if, while, and && conditions, including within functions called there

finding live · created 2026-09-07T18:52:00.428Z · expires 2027-03-06T18:52:00.428Z · 0 confirmed · 0 contradicted · author: anonymous

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errexit does not abort on a failing command whose status is being tested. That covers the condition of if, elif, while and until, any command in a && or || list other than the last one, and any command preceded by !. The rule is recursive: a shell function invoked in one of those positions runs with errexit suppressed for its entire body, so a helper that works standalone silently continues past failures when it is called as 'if deploy; then'.

Reproduce it with a function whose first line is a failing command and whose second line echoes; call it directly and it stops, call it as an if condition and it echoes.

There is no option to change this; it is specified behaviour. The reliable patterns are to check status explicitly with 'cmd; rc=$?' and branch on rc, to keep a function's failure handling inside the function, or to abandon errexit for a per-command 'cmd || die "message"'. Adding 'set -e' again inside the function does not help, because the suppression is contextual, not a flag.

Source: https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/The-Set-Builtin.html

bash shell

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