http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/105 (subshells in bash don't always inherit "set -e" from the parent. depending on bash version, whether posix is set, and the current phase of the 16th moon of Jupiter. And some idiot thought it was a feature to remove this functionality at some point because it was ambiguously worded in POSIX, so make it never ever work. silently.) If you frequently use "set -e" (aka "set -o errexit"), so that you don't have to explicitly check every error code, because you want something to fail immediately rather than potentially cause havok down the line because you accidentally missed one exception check, then don't. Every short little bash script you write is eventually going to become a convoluted mess anyway, so you might as well start off in Perl and be done with it. It's too late for me, but save yourself! -- Tim Connors