While shellcheck is a fantastic tool, it doesn't test for lack of error handling generally. In this area it only has a predefined set of known pitfalls, like "c

While shellcheck is a fantastic tool, it doesn't test for lack of error handling generally. In this area it only has a predefined set of known pitfalls, like "cd". Try running this through shellcheck and it will happily let it through. curl icanhazip.com > myip.txt cat myip.txt Taking you back to the every line must be scrutinized problem. Maybe you can do it. Maybe i can do it. But does the rest of your large organization of diverse experiences have the discipline to do it? In my experience, from multiple organizations of different sizes - no. Even with shellcheck and mandatory reviews it just doesn't work. It's tiring to for the 100th time remind someone that curl can fail and arguments must be quoted, you worry being labeled as the know-it-all-besserwisser that shoots down even simple scripts, that's assuming the reviewer spots the errors in the first place. What's worse is that the code doesn't immediately tell you if errors has been considered or not, making it very difficult to read existing scripts. Shellcheck btw has an optional check for the case of functions used in combination with errexit https://www.shellcheck.net/wiki/SC2310 https://www.shellcheck.net/wiki/SC2310