You could decide that the exit status 77 for instance means exit any level of subshell, and do

set -E
trap '[ "$?" -ne 77 ] || exit 77' ERR

(echo here; (echo there; (exit 12); echo ici; exit 77);
echo not here); echo not here either

set -E in combination with ERR traps is a bit like an improved version of set -e in that it allows you to define your own error handling.

In zsh, ERR traps are inherited automatically, so you don't need set -E, you can also define traps as TRAPERR() functions, and modify them through $functions[TRAPERR], like functions[TRAPERR]="echo was here; $functions[TRAPERR]"

You could decide that the exit status 77 for instance means exit any level of subshell, and do

set -E
trap '[ "$?" -ne 77 ] || exit 77' ERR

(
  echo here
  (
    echo there
    (
      exit 12 # not 77, exit only this subshell
    )
    echo ici
    exit 77 # exit all subshells
  )
  echo not here 
) 
echo not here either

set -E in combination with ERR traps is a bit like an improved version of set -e in that it allows you to define your own error handling.

In zsh, ERR traps are inherited automatically, so you don't need set -E, you can also define traps as TRAPERR() functions, and modify them through $functions[TRAPERR], like functions[TRAPERR]="echo was here; $functions[TRAPERR]"

You could decide that the exit status 77 for instance means exit any level of subshell, and do

set -E
trap '[ "$?" -ne 77 ] || exit 77' ERR

(echo here; (echo there; (exit 12); echo ici; exit 77);
echo not here); echo not here either

You could decide that the exit status 77 for instance means exit any level of subshell, and do

set -E
trap '[ "$?" -ne 77 ] || exit 77' ERR

(echo here; (echo there; (exit 12); echo ici; exit 77);
echo not here); echo not here either

set -E in combination with ERR traps is a bit like an improved version of set -e in that it allows you to define your own error handling.

In zsh, ERR traps are inherited automatically, so you don't need set -E, you can also define traps as TRAPERR() functions, and modify them through $functions[TRAPERR], like functions[TRAPERR]="echo was here; $functions[TRAPERR]"