Are the following two boolean expressions the same?
if [ -n $1 ] ; then
if [ -n "$1" ] ; then
If not - When should you put a variable in quotes?
asked Aug 30, 2012 at 16:56
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While this is not strictly off-topic, it could get more attention at Stack Overflow, or possibly Unix & Linux.– nanofaradAug 30, 2012 at 17:14
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Thanks - I posted this question on stackoverflow stackoverflow.com/questions/12202778/… and would like to request that this question gets deleted from askubuntu– user784637Aug 30, 2012 at 18:07
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2 Answers
Here is an example that should demonstrate the difference
~$ t="alfa beta"
~$ if [ -n $t ] ; then echo OK ; fi
bash: [: alfa: binary operator expected
~$ if [ -n "$t" ] ; then echo OK ; fi
OK
~$ ls blah*
blah1 blah2 blah3
~$ t="blah*"
~$ if [ -n "$t" ] ; then echo OK ; fi
OK
~$ if [ -n $t ] ; then echo OK ; fi
bash: [: too many arguments
In other words, with quotes, the $t is expanded only once and put in quotes as a single argument to test ([ is just an alias to test). Without quotes, it is substituted by the contents of $t and then expanded again.
In the test conditions, which is the same as [, you should always use double quotes, otherwise the test command might miss an argument if the variable is empty or undefined, or have too many arguments if the variable contains whitespace. In bash, though, it is safer to use the builtin [[ for conditions that does not need the quotes.
