Answer by Gilles Quénot for What does 'set -e' mean in a Bash script?

From help set and Bash Reference Documentation: The Set Builtin:

  -e  Exit immediately if a command exits with a non-zero status.

But it's considered bad practice by some (Bash FAQ and IRCFreenode #bash FAQ authors). It's recommended to use:

trap 'do_something' ERR

to run do_something function when errors occur.

See Why doesn't set -e (or set -o errexit, or trap ERR) do what I expected?