🛡️ Bash Safety 101: Why set -euo pipefail Should Be in Every Production Script

If you’re writing Bash scripts without set -euo pipefail, you’re basically driving without a seatbelt. Sure, you might be fine… but why gamble your cluster, your pipeline, or your sanity?

Here’s the trio that makes your scripts safer, louder, and far less likely to explode at 2AM:

🔥 set -e — Exit on Error

Your script stops immediately if any command returns a non-zero exit code. No more blindly marching forward after a failure.

🔍 set -u — Catch Unset Variables

If you accidentally reference $USRNAME instead of $USERNAME, the script dies instantly. Yes, it saves you from yourself. No shame.

🧯 set -o pipefail — Pipeline Failure Detection

By default, Bash only checks the last command in a pipeline. With pipefail, the whole pipeline fails if any part fails.

Example: cat nonexistent.txt | grep something Without pipefail: still “succeeds” 🙃 With pipefail: fails properly because cat blew up.

🚀 Why It Matters

Together, these options make your script fail fast, fail loud, and avoid silent, cascading disasters. That’s why you’ll see this at the top of high-quality production scripts:

#!/bin/bash set -euo pipefail

If you’re not using it yet… today’s a great day to start. Your future self (and your on-call pager) will thank you.