I usually don't write bash scripts. If use the terminal often to run AWS ClI commands, but if I need logic or something a bit more complex I'd rather go for a tiny NodeJs file.
It feels more natural to me, more readable and I can debug what is going wrong.
Sometimes though I have to touch old bash scripts used for continuous integration. Like today. Well, it was actually a YAML file used to run GilabCI Pipelines, but the job script contained a bash script, that wasn't working.
if [$CI_PIPELINE_SOURCE == "schedule"] && [[ -z "$STAGE" ]]; then
# collapsed multi-line command
This condition was giving an error, which was swallowed by the CI giving a successful job, but with an, of course, unexpected behavior.
27/bin/bash: line 118: [schedule: command not found
I remembered that there was something about Single Brackets or double Brackets so I immediately changed that to
[[$CI_PIPELINE_SOURCE == "schedule"]]
Nope.
Then I remembered there was something about Wrapping Variables in Quotes therefore I changed to
[["$CI_PIPELINE_SOURCE" == "schedule"]]
Nope.
I checked the docs and Stackoverflow
After googling and trying to mix and match, Single Equal / Single Equals / Quotes in every possible allowed combination I was left staring at the script and at the StackOverflow example for a while. Until it struck me.
The space.
T h e f r e a k i n g m i s s i n g s p a c e
if [[ $CI_PIPELINE_SOURCE == "schedule" ]] && [[ -z "$STAGE" ]]; then
I just repropose here the Stackoverflow explanation as my own reminder
= || == ?
Bash allows == to be used for equality with [ (but this is not standard)
To quote or not to quote?
Always wrap your variables with quotes, because if it is empty, your Bash script would encounter a syntax error. (Not because it would try to compare something with a null value, but because the syntax itself would be kind of broken.)
Hope it helps.
Latest comments (2)
I heartily recommend running shellcheck to avoid this sort of thing. You can integrate it with your editor or IDE as you would any other language and it'll tell you what's wrong in excruciating detail:
Awesome 🤩. Will definitely check it out. Thanks!!