[mod]

Can you at least explain what this is doing, outside of saving me headaches?

[Anderkent]

-errexit: exit the script when a command fails -nounset: fail when referencing an unset variable -pipefail: fail when the any command in a pipeline fails, not just the last one

The last option is unfortunately harder to use, since some programs misbehave in pipelines.

[redsymbol]

http://redsymbol.net/articles/unofficial-bash-strict-mode/

[barsonme]

set -o errexit (set -e): exit script when command fails

set -o nounset (set -u): exit script when it tries to use undeclared variables

set -o pipefail: returns error from pipe `|` if any of the commands in the pipe fail (normally just returns an error if the last fails)