Re: set -e in (subshells) does not work independently of outer context

[Eric Blake]

On 01/24/2012 02:53 AM, Jim Avera wrote:
> Description:
> set -e in (subshells) should be independent of surrounding context.
> The man page says "[set -e] applies to the shell environment and
> each subshell environment separately",
> but actually set -e is prevented from working in a (subshell) if it is
> disabled in the
> surrounding context.
> 
> Repeat-By:
>     set +e
>     (
>       set -e
>       cat /non/existent/path
>       echo "Did not abort.  Isn't this a bug?"
>     ) || true

Alas, POSIX requires this behavior.
http://austingroupbugs.net/view.php?id=52


>     In summary, shouldn't set -e in (subshell code) operate independently
>     of the surrounding context?

No.  The POSIX description is clear that surrounding context affects
whether set -e is ignored in a subshell.

  2) The -e setting shall be ignored when executing the compound
          list following the while, until, if, or elif reserved word,
          a pipeline beginning with the ! reserved word, or any
          command of an AND-OR list other than the last.

My personal advice - don't ever expect 'set -e' to work; there are just
too many pitfalls and buggy shell implementations with differing
interpretations to ever expect it to be useful, even if there is a
standardized documentation for how it should behave, and even if bash
has (finally) caught up to the standards.

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake@redhat.com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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