Break out of while loop on error

Question

I have a while loop in this form:

while :; do
   performTask1 || break
   performTask2 || break
   performTask3 || break
   ...
   performTaskX || break
done

Basically, I want to break out of the loop whenever one of the tasks errors out. Is there a better way to achieve this?

I suppose another way to do this is:

while :; do
   performTask1 && performTask2 ... && performTaskX || break
done

However, this still looks ugly to me.

Answer 1

Essentially you are saying that if a task fails then the subsequent tasks should not execute. There is no need to break, just make the tasks dependent on the successfull completion of preceding tasks:

while
  performTask1 &&
  performTask2 &&
  ...
  performTaskX-1 &&
  performTaskX
do :; done

There is no need to put all tasks on one line... This form does not look ugly to my eyes.

Answer 2

set -e
while :; do
   performTask1
   performTask2
   performTask3
   ...
   performTaskX
done
set +e

This will exit your entire script if there is any error.

If this isn't the last part of your script, you could instead use:

while performTask1 &&
    performTask2 &&
    performTask3 &&
    ... &&
    performTaskX
do
  :
done

---

Also see:

• Where are bash line continuations after && and || documented?