Hello Chet, thank you for your help and pointing to the posix behavior.
Quoting https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Bash-POSIX-Mode.html "[...] A non-interactive shell exits with an error status if a variable assignment error occurs when no command name follows the assignment statements. A variable assignment error occurs, for example, when trying to assign a value to a readonly variable. [...]" This helps. So what I need to do to force the script to proceed is to add another command after the assignment statement. Before ist was echo "A" declare -r vconst="I am fixed." echo "B" vconst="new value" # fails here echo "C" # never reached and if I add an empty command after the assignment statement it behaves as expected. echo "A" declare -r vconst="I am fixed." echo "B" vconst="new value" : # please note the : at the end. (no operation command) echo "C" # now printed End then it does not matter if bash is in posix mode or not. Thank you for your help in that matter. Cheers, Alex