Re: When scripting, which is better?

Justin Clift writes:

> i.e. if [ -x "$self_path/postmaster" ] && [ -x "$self_path/psql" ];
> then
>
> or
>
> if [[ -x "$self_path/postmaster" && -x "$self_path/psql" ]]; then

I don't think the second one is a valid expression. ;-)

Maybe you were wondering about [[ ]] vs [] -- In Autoconf [] are the quote
characters so you have to double-quote, sort of. It's better to use
'test' in that case because m4 quoting can be tricky. I prefer test over
[] in general because it is more consistent and slightly clearer.

> if [ x"$foo" = x"" ]; then

Maximum safety for the case where $foo starts with a dash. Yes, that
means all comparisons should really be done that way. No, I don't think
we should do it in all cases if we know what $foo can contain, because
that makes code *really* unreadable.

> or
>
> if [ "$op" = "" ]; then
>
> or
>
> if [ "$foo" ]; then

These two are equivalent but the second one is arguably less clear.

--
Peter Eisentraut peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net http://funkturm.homeip.net/~peter