Bash script error checking

Question

I'm somewhat of a Bash newbie (in terms of scripting) and want to know the preferred method of error checking. I'm writing a build script that goes through a number of commands and I want the script to stop if any of the commands exit with anything other than 0. Other than checking the response code after each command, is there a "universal" way of exiting the script if anything returns a non-0? Thanks!

Answer 1

use set -e at the beginning of your script.

It will stop the script from running after a command fails and the error code will be forwarded.

From bash documentation:

  -e      Exit immediately if a pipeline (which may consist  of  a
          single  simple command),  a subshell command enclosed in
          parentheses, or one of the commands executed as part  of
          a  command  list  enclosed  by braces (see SHELL GRAMMAR
          above) exits with a non-zero status.  The shell does not
          exit  if  the  command that fails is part of the command
          list immediately following a  while  or  until  keyword,
          part  of  the  test  following  the  if or elif reserved
          words, part of any command executed in a && or  ││  list
          except  the  command  following  the final && or ││, any
          command in a pipeline but the last, or if the  command’s
          return  value  is being inverted with !.  A trap on ERR,
          if set, is executed before the shell exits.  This option
          applies to the shell environment and each subshell envi-
          ronment separately (see  COMMAND  EXECUTION  ENVIRONMENT
          above), and may cause subshells to exit before executing
          all the commands in the subshell.