How do I get the effect and usefulness of “set -e” inside a shell function?

I eventually went with this, which apparently works. I tried the export method at first, but then found that I needed to export every global (constant) variable the script uses.

Disable set -e, then run the function call inside a subshell that has set -e enabled. Save the exit status of the subshell in a variable, re-enable set -e, then test the var.

f() { echo "a"; false;  echo "Should NOT get HERE"; }

# Don't pipe the subshell into anything or we won't be able to see its exit status
set +e ; ( set -e; f ) ; err_status=$?
set -e

## cleaner syntax which POSIX sh doesn't support.  Use bash/zsh/ksh/other fancy shells
if ((err_status)) ; then
    echo "f returned false: $err_status"
fi

## POSIX-sh features only (e.g. dash, /bin/sh)
if test "$err_status" -ne 0 ; then
    echo "f returned false: $err_status"
fi

echo "always print this"

You can’t run f as part of a pipeline, or as part of a && of || command list (except as the last command in the pipe or list), or as the condition in an if or while, or other contexts that ignore set -e. This code also can’t be in any of those contexts, so if you use this in a function, callers have to use the same subshell / save-exit-status trickery. This use of set -e for semantics similar to throwing/catching exceptions is not really suitable for general use, given the limitations and hard-to-read syntax.

trap err_handler_function ERR has the same limitations as set -e, in that it won’t fire for errors in contexts where set -e won’t exit on failed commands.

You might think the following would work, but it doesn’t:

if ! ( set -e; f );then    ##### doesn't work, f runs ignoring -e
    echo "f returned false: $?"
fi

set -e doesn’t take effect inside the subshell because it remembers that it’s inside the condition of an if. I thought being a subshell would change that, but only being in a separate file and running a whole separate shell on it would work.