mjhjmtu

I was trying to write a short script which would write all the executable programs found in $PATH:

for dir in $(tr ':' ' ' <<<"$PATH"); do
 for pgm in $dir/*; do
 if command -v "$pgm" >/dev/null 2>&1; then
 echo "$pgm"
 fi
 done
done | sort >file

In bash, it works as expected, but zsh stops processing the script as soon as a filename generation fails in the inner loop:

for pgm in $dir/*; do
 ^^^^^^
 ...
done

As a result, since my $PATH contains a directory which doesn't contain any file (/usr/local/sbin), in zsh, the script fails to write the executables found in the directories afterwards.

Here's another code showing the same issue:

for f in /not_a_dir/*; do
 echo 'in the loop'
done
echo 'after the loop'

In bash, this command outputs:

in the loop
after the loop

And exits with the code 0.

While in zsh, the same command outputs:

no matches found: /not_a_dir/*

And exits with the code 1.

The difference of behavior between the shells seems to come from the nomatch option, which is described in man zshoptions:

NOMATCH (+3) <C> <Z>

If a pattern for filename generation has no matches, print an error, instead of leaving it unchanged
in the argument list. This also applies to file expansion of an initial ~ or =.

And also explained in man zshexpn (section FILENAME GENERATION):

The word is replaced with a list of sorted filenames that match the pattern. If no matching pattern is found, the shell gives an error message, unless the NULL_GLOB option is set, in which case the word is deleted; or unless the NOMATCH option is unset, in which case the word is left unchanged.

Because if I unset it, zsh behaves like bash:

unsetopt nomatch
for f in /not_a_dir/*; do
 echo 'in the loop'
done
echo 'after the loop'

Now I understand the difference of behaviors between bash and zsh, but I want to understand in which conditions zsh stops processing a script.
So, I tried to reproduce the same issue by replacing the failed filename generation with a failed command (by executing not_a_cmd):

for f in ~/*; do
 not_a_cmd
done
echo 'after the loop'

But the output of this script is almost identical in both shells (apart from the error messages due to not_a_cmd). In particular, both shells print:

after the loop

And both shells exit with the code 0.

So, it seems that a failed filename generation (like for f in /not_a_dir/*) makes zsh stop processing a script, but not a failed command (like not_a_cmd).

Is it an exception, or are there other cases?

I'm using zsh 5.6.2-dev-0 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu).