Re: Regression with subshells and set -e

Chet Ramey <[email protected]> Thu, 11 Jun 2026 11:59:19 -0400

Newsgroups	gmane.comp.shells.bash.bugs
Organization	ITS, Case Western Reserve University
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

On 6/10/26 4:37 PM, Alex Chernyakhovsky wrote:

> I appreciate the response. However, I find the current behavior
> confusing and undesirable. 

You're free to feel that way.

> It is clear the subshell itself is part of
> an AND-OR list, but I find the argument that the commands within the
> subshell context are themselves part of the AND-OR list hard to buy
> into. 

Because a subshell environment is, in POSIX terms, created as "a duplicate
of the shell environment." The shell that is forked to run the commands in
the subshell command is a part of the AND-OR list, and ignores the -e
setting in the same way its parent would.

What makes the subshell different from a compound command such as { list; }
or a shell function? dash, for instance, carries the -e setting into both
of those compound commands. Is it simply the assumption that the shell
forks a child process, which it's not required to do?

> 
> Is there any chance we could reopen the discussion if this is actually
> the desired interpretation? 

If you would like to open an issue with the austin group, you can do so at
austingroupbugs.net (which is, unfortunately, down at the moment).

> Having multiple allegedly POSIX-compliant
> shells in use that have very different behavior here makes it
> difficult to write portable code in shell if there are gotchas in what
> is such a fundamental feature -- even if it just results in a
> clarification of the POSIX text.

The behavior of `set -e' has always varied widely and is a rat's nest of
complexity.

-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
		 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU    [email protected]    http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/

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