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(16) Conditional Tests

Conditional tests for [...] and [[...]] commands

Most of the useful flow-control operators involve making some conditional test and branching on the result (true/false). The test can be either the test command, or its alias, [, or the ksh/bash built-in [[ ... ]] command, which has slightly different options, or it can be any command which returns a suitable exit status. Zero is taken to be "True", while any non-zero value is "False". Note that this is backwards from the C language convention.

File tests

-e file: True if file exists (can be of any type).
-f file: True if file exists and is an ordinary file.
-d file: True if file exists and is a directory.
-r file: True if file exists and is readable
Similarly, -w = writable, -x = executable, -L = is a symlink.
-s file: True if file exists and has size greater than zero
-t filedescriptor: True if the open filedescriptor is associated with a terminal device. E.g. this is used to determine if standard output has been redirected to a file.

Character string tests

-n "string": true if string has non-zero length
-z "string": true if string has zero length
With [, the argument must be quoted, because if it is a variable that has a null value, the resulting expansion ( [ -z ] ) is a syntax error. An expansion resulting in "" counts as a null string.
For [ only, a quoted string alone is equivalent to the -n test, e.g. [ "$var" ]. In older shells for which [ is an external program, the only way to test for a null string is:
if [ "X$var" = "X" ]
This is rarely needed now, but is still often found.
$variable = text: True if $variable matches text.
$variable < text: True if $variable comes before (lexically) text
Similarly, > = comes after

cond-tests.src last modified Feb 11, 2005

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