How to undo the effect of “set -e” which makes bash exit immediately if any command fails?

Question

After entering set -e in an interactive bash shell, bash will exit immediately if any command exits with non-zero. How can I undo this effect?

Answer 1

It might be unhandy to use set +e/set -e each time you want to override it. I found a simpler solution.

Instead of doing it like this:

set +e
command_that_might_fail_but_we_want_to_ignore_it
set -e

you can do it like this:

command_that_might_fail_but_we_want_to_ignore_it || true

or, if you want to save keystrokes and don't mind being a little cryptic:

command_that_might_fail_but_we_want_to_ignore_it || :

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

With set +e. Yeah, it's backward that you enable shell options with set - and disable them with set +. Historical raisins, donchanow.

Answer 3

• Using + rather than - causes these flags to be turned off.

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