[LukeShu]

There are several ways to get Bash to read the whole thing before executing.

My preferred method is to write a main() function, and call main "$@" at the very end of the script.

Another trick, useful for shorter scripts, is to just wrap the body of the script in {}, which causes the script to be a giant compound command that is parsed before any of it is executed; instead of a list of commands that is executed as read.

[unhammer]

Ah, thank you for that. I may just start using these tricks in all my scripts :-)