In a Bash script, how can I exit the entire script if a certain condition occurs?

Use set -e

#!/bin/bash

set -e

/bin/command-that-fails
/bin/command-that-fails2

The script will terminate after the first line that fails (returns nonzero exit code). In this case, command-that-fails2 will not run.

If you were to check the return status of every single command, your script would look like this:

#!/bin/bash

# I'm assuming you're using make

cd /project-dir
make
if [[ $? -ne 0 ]] ; then
    exit 1
fi

cd /project-dir2
make
if [[ $? -ne 0 ]] ; then
    exit 1
fi

With set -e it would look like:

#!/bin/bash

set -e

cd /project-dir
make

cd /project-dir2
make

Any command that fails will cause the entire script to fail and return an exit status you can check with $?. If your script is very long or you're building a lot of stuff it's going to get pretty ugly if you add return status checks everywhere.


Try this statement:

exit 1

Replace 1 with appropriate error codes. See also Exit Codes With Special Meanings.