[cesnja]

I'd advise against that kind of shortening. If you use set -e, which you should, then

    if [ a = b ]; then
      echo "Oops!"
    fi

will do exactly what you imagined, but

    [ a = b ] && echo "Oops!"

will quit with an error if expression a does not equal expression b.

[Calzifer]

No it won't. set -e is implicit disabled for the first command with && and ||. Same for a command after if/while/until and after !. It should only matter if you implicit return immediately after.

  $ bash -ec 'if [ 1 = 2 ]; then echo true; fi; echo $?'
  0
  $ bash -ec '[ 1 = 2 ] && echo true; echo $?'
  1

In both cases it does not quite and execute the last echo.