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Re: bash 'if [[ <cond> ]]; then ...fi' should 'then' be redundant?
From: |
Chet Ramey |
Subject: |
Re: bash 'if [[ <cond> ]]; then ...fi' should 'then' be redundant? |
Date: |
Thu, 7 May 2020 08:44:24 -0400 |
User-agent: |
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.14; rv:68.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/68.7.0 |
On 5/7/20 8:05 AM, Vang Le-Quy wrote:
> Ever since I wrote my first bash `if`, I was told to immediately use `then`.
> This structure become so familiar:
>
> ```
> if [[ <condition> ]]; then
> statements
> else
> statements
> fi
>
> ```
>
> There might be a historical reason for `then` to be in there. But would it
> just be straight forward without `then`? What is ambiguous about it?
The command after the `if' is any command list, not just a conditional
command. You use `then' to separate it from the true case command list.
--
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU address@hidden http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/