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up vote 8 down vote favorite

In bash, are [[ $variable ]] and [[ -n $variable ]] completely equivalent? It appears to be the case judging by the output below, but I see both forms of usage prevalent in shell scripts.

$ z="abra"
$ [[ $z ]]
$ echo $?
0
$ [[ -n $z ]]
$ echo $?
0
$ z=""
$ [[ $z ]]
$ echo $?
1
$ [[ -n $z ]]
$ echo $?
1
$ unset z
$ [[ $z ]]
$ echo $?
1
$ [[ -n $z ]]
$ echo $?
1
share|improve this question
    
Hm. Interesting. Outputs from [[ -n $(echo -ne "\0") ]]; echo $? and [ -n $(echo -ne "\0") ]; echo $? differ –  dchirikov Jan 30 '13 at 19:31
    
@dchirikov, that's because in the second one, you forgot to quote the command substitution, so it ended up being [ -n ], the same [ -n -n ]. In shells other than zsh, command (even builtin) arguments or shell variables can't contain NUL characters. –  Stéphane Chazelas Jan 30 '13 at 20:29

2 Answers 2

up vote 4 down vote accepted

[ "$var" ] is equivalent to [ -n "$var" ] in bash and most shells nowadays. In other older shells, they're meant to be equivalent, but suffer from different bugs for some special values of "$var" like =, ( or !.

I find [ -n "$var" ] more legible and is the pendant of [ -z "$var" ].

[[ -n $var ]] is the same as [[ $var ]] in all the shells where that non-standard ksh syntax is implemented.

test "x$var" != x would be the most reliable if you want to be portable to very old shells.

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up vote 1 down vote

According to Test for non-zero length string in bash: [ -n “$var” ] or [ “$var” ], yes, they are equivalent.

They are equivalent even quoting the name of the variable.

Important to notice: the name of the question I cite refers only to [, but the answer considers both [ and [[.

share|improve this answer
1  
But [[]] is not the equivalent of [] :) –  dchirikov Jan 30 '13 at 19:32
    
No, they aren't. But in the answer I cite, both forms are considered. –  nozimica Jan 30 '13 at 19:35
    
Behaviour in testing "\0" as a variable is different. Operator [] gives 0 or 1. And [[]] gives 1 in both cases. –  dchirikov Jan 30 '13 at 19:55
    
+1 for the link which is very informative however Stephane Chazelas's answer, which I accepted, is more to the point. –  1_CR Jan 30 '13 at 20:40

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