There are quite a few examples around, just google the parameters 'set euo pipefail' (first hit [0]) you're right that just putting the set options on top of y

There are quite a few examples around, just google the parameters 'set euo pipefail' (first hit [0]) you're right that just putting the set options on top of your file would be a bad idea. you need to write your script to actually account for these errors, making possible exitcodes entirely transparent 1 #!/bin/bash 2 3 set -euo pipefail 4 if ${DEBUG:-false}; then set -x; fi 5 6 function random_exitcode(){ 7 return $(( RANDOM % 5)) 8 } 9 10 function handle_error(){ 11 case "$?" in 12 1) echo "handling exitcode 1!";; 13 2) echo "handling exitcode 2!!";; 14 3) echo "handling exitcode 3!!!";; 15 *) echo "encountered unexpected exitcode: $?"; exit 2;; 16 esac 17 } 18 19 random_exitcode || handle_error or, if you don't like functions: random_exitcode || LAST_EXITCODE=$? case "${LAST_EXITCODE:=0}" in ... [0] https://coderwall.com/p/fkfaqq/safer-bash-scripts-with-set-euxo-pipefail https://coderwall.com/p/fkfaqq/safer-bash-scripts-with-set-e...