Question

I would like to set -x temporarily in my script and then return in to the original state.

Is there a way to do it without starting new subshell?
Something like

echo_was_on=.......
... ...
if $echo_was_on; then set -x; else set +x; fi

Answer 1

You can check the value of $- to see the current options; if it contains an x, it was set. You can check like so:

old_setting=${-//[^x]/}
...
if [[ -n "$old_setting" ]]; then set -x; else set +x; fi

In case it’s not familiar to you: the ${} above is a Bash Substring Replacement, which takes the variable - and replaces anything that’s not an x with nothing, leaving just the x behind (or nothing, if there was no x)