Aborting a shell script if any command returns a non-zero value

Add this to the beginning of the script:

set -e

This will cause the shell to exit immediately if a simple command exits with a nonzero exit value. A simple command is any command not part of an if, while, or until test, or part of an && or || list.

See the bash(1) man page on the "set" internal command for more details.

I personally start almost all shell scripts with "set -e". It's really annoying to have a script stubbornly continue when something fails in the middle and breaks assumptions for the rest of the script.

If you have cleanup you need to do on exit, you can also use 'trap' with the pseudo-signal ERR. This works the same way as trapping INT or any other signal; bash throws ERR if any command exits with a nonzero value:

# Create the trap with   
#    trap COMMAND SIGNAME [SIGNAME2 SIGNAME3...]
trap "rm -f /tmp/$MYTMPFILE; exit 1" ERR INT TERM
command1
command2
command3
# Partially turn off the trap.
trap - ERR
# Now a control-C will still cause cleanup, but
# a nonzero exit code won't:
ps aux | grep blahblahblah

Or, especially if you're using "set -e", you could trap EXIT; your trap will then be executed when the script exits for any reason, including a normal end, interrupts, an exit caused by the -e option, etc.

The if statements in your example are unnecessary. Just do it like this:

dosomething1 || exit 1

If you take Ville Laurikari's advice and use set -e then for some commands you may need to use this:

dosomething || true

The || true will make the command pipeline have a true return value even if the command fails so the the -e option will not kill the script.

To add to the accepted answer:

Bear in mind that set -e sometimes is not enough, specially if you have pipes.

For example, suppose you have this script

#!/bin/bash
set -e 
./configure  > configure.log
make

... which works as expected: an error in configure aborts the execution.

Tomorrow you make a seemingly trivial change:

#!/bin/bash
set -e 
./configure  | tee configure.log
make

... and now it does not work. This is explained here, and a workaround (Bash only) is provided:

#!/bin/bash
set -e 
set -o pipefail

./configure  | tee configure.log
make