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Op here. Exactly this. I’ve seen many times where people had scripts and had to modify it (such as commenting code) when something has failed in the middle of the script.

Don't forget about pipefail!!

set -eu set -o pipefail

Anything else I'm missing?

nounset

`set -x` can be very useful.

IIRC, `set -o nounset` is the bash equivalent for `set -u` in sh.

Seems like all the pedants came out for this article. In good-faith I understand the principles OP is suggesting and have first-hand experience of their usefulness. But it's easier to nit-pick I guess.

This is a case where the pedents should at least be considered.

Everytime I discuss Bash on the net, these gremlin style characters ruin the fruitful discussions I've had ... I think the article provides excellent advice.

>The article is about writing bash scripts that don't care if you've ran them once, or 10 times.

Is the idea that participants don't know what "idempotent" means in a thread with that word in the title?

Precisely.