Some time ago I started to doubt if using 'set -e' is a good idea.

I mean, if it would work as you expect it to, it certainly is a good idea to exit a script as soon as something fails. But sadly not all implementations behave similarly [1] and if you call a function from within a condition, 'set -e' gets deactivated/doesn't work.

For illustration, take a look at the following example:

  #!/bin/bash
  
  foo() {
    set -e
    false
    echo "Sucks"
  }
  
  printf 'Normal: %s\n' "$(foo)"
  printf 'Condition: %s\n'  "$(foo || true)"

Output:

  Normal: 
  Condition: Sucks

Probably not what you would have expected. Not using 'set -e' is no good solution either, so, for the time being, I still use it, but I am still looking for a better solution.

[1] https://www.in-ulm.de/~mascheck/various/set-e/