as I understand it, what you are testing there is: what does the test return to the OS?

For that matter [[ 1 ]] is just as good as [[ 0 ]] .. they will both return "0" to the OS and print "true".

Now .. if you go and test [[ 2 != 2 ]] ... you'll get a "1" in return ( check with 'echo $?' ) and *then* you'll get a "false".

All this to say: I went with option 2

I may be utterly wrong though .. 😱

This one made me think, play around in the terminal, and try to read bash documentation.

Both [[ 1 ]] and [[ 0 ]] evaluate to true, while [[ '' ]] does not.

Feel free to post more of these 😀

I really don't do bash scripting much, but typing this into the shell actually gives me:

bash: [[1]]: command not found

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Disagree. The whole point of the [[ ]] syntax is to examine and compare strings (and also filenames). There's no expectation of numerical or boolean analysis.

Now, if you said that bash is cursed because of the string substitution syntax, I'm with you on that one. Its horrifying.

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I disagree. If you `man test` you'll see that numerical analysis is indeed supported and I use it regularly as a way to evaluate timestamps (converting to epoch seconds and using gt, lt, etc).

Here's an example of where I use it for both boolean and numerical analysis:

gist.github.com/vwbusguy/bbfa0…

Calculates a new serial for a bind zone SOA. Assumes single zone per file.

Calculates a new serial for a bind zone SOA. Assumes single zone per file. - calculate_new_bind_serial.sh

^Gist

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