How to exit if a command failed?

Question

I am a noob in shell-scripting. I want to print a message and exit my script if a command fails. I\'ve tried:

my_command && (echo \'my_command failed         


        

Answer 1

The other answers have covered the direct question well, but you may also be interested in using set -e. With that, any command that fails (outside of specific contexts like if tests) will cause the script to abort. For certain scripts, it's very useful.