[SOLVED] Why doesn't bash flag -e exit when a subshell fails?

Issue

I'm a bit confused here. My goal here is to have the bash script exit with a non-zero exit code when any of the commands within the script fails. Using the -e flag, I assumed this would be the case, even when using subshells. Below is a simplified example:

#!/bin/bash -e

(false)

echo $?
echo "Line reached!"

Here is the output when ran:

[$]>Tests/Exec/continuous-integration.sh 
1
Line reached!

Bash version: 3.2.25 on CentOS

Solution

It appears as though this is related to your version of bash. On machines that I have access to, bash version 3.1.17 and 3.2.39 exhibit this behaviour, bash 4.1.5 does not.

Although a bit ugly, a solution that works in both versions could be something like this:

#!/bin/bash -e

(false) || exit $?

echo $?
echo "Line reached!"

There are some notes in the bash source changelog which related to bugs with the set -e option.

Answered By - Austin Phillips

Answer Checked By - Katrina (WPSolving Volunteer)