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Asked: 2026-06-18T11:13:15+00:00

In Perl, you can write a $SIG{__DIE__} handler to execute code if the program

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In Perl, you can write a $SIG{__DIE__} handler to execute code if the program is exiting with an error. Does bash provide similar functionality?

Here’s what I’m trying to do: I have a bash script that creates a new directory and calls several commands which in turn populates the new directory with data files. I’m using set -e so that the script will terminate immediately if any of the commands fail. In case of a failure, I would like the script to remove the directory that it created. If the script completes successfully, then of course the new output should remain.

Does bash provide a DIE signal handler, or any similar functionality that would enable me to do this?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Since you’re using set -e, you can install an ERR handler:

    trap errfunc ERR

    errfunc will be called if any command exits with a nonzero exit code (and because you are using set -e, this will terminate the script).

    You can pass arguments this way, too:

    trap 'errfunc $LINENO' ERR

    Since the trap command is eval‘d at the point of the error, this trap will pass the failing command’s line number to errfunc.

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