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up vote 6 down vote favorite

When I type this in the terminal

test 4 -lt 6

I don't get any output. Why not? I need that 0 or 1

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3 Answers 3

up vote 8 down vote accepted

You get 0 or 1. In the exitcode.

bash-4.2$ test 4 -lt 6

bash-4.2$ echo $?
0

bash-4.2$ test 4 -gt 6

bash-4.2$ echo $?
1

Update: To store the exitcode for later use, just assign it to a variable:

bash-4.2$ test 4 -lt 6

bash-4.2$ first=$?

bash-4.2$ test 4 -gt 6

bash-4.2$ second=$?

bash-4.2$ echo "first test gave $first and the second $second"
first test gave 0 and the second 1
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1  
is there a way to pipe the exit code? –  indieman Oct 11 '12 at 7:38
3  
No. Only output can be redirected. Anyway, usually there is no need for that. To store it for later use, just assign it to a variable. Or tell us what exactly is your intention with that value. –  manatwork Oct 11 '12 at 7:41
2  
The exit code is placed into the $? variable -- at least until it gets overwritten by the next command you execute. –  Shadur Oct 11 '12 at 7:45
1  
PS: You can use the $PIPESTATUS array to get the result of multiple commands in a pipeline. $? will by be the result of the last command in the pipeline if the pipefail option is off (the default). –  l0b0 Oct 11 '12 at 9:26
up vote 2 down vote

If you want the result of a comparison on standard out instead of an exit code, you can use the expr(1) command:

$ expr 4 '<=' 6
1

Two things to note:

  1. you will likely need to quote the operator as a lot of them conflict with shell metacharacters
  2. the output value is the opposite of the return code for test. test returns 0 for true (which is the standard for exit codes), but expr prints 1 for true.
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1  
3. There is a test shell builtin, which is considerably faster (about 50 times on my machine) than the test and expr executables from the coreutils package. –  manatwork Oct 11 '12 at 11:18
    
+1 for the second point. Could get a bug that is very frustrating to find if you mess that up. –  Emanuel Berg Oct 11 '12 at 17:18
up vote 3 down vote

Another way is 

test 4 -lt 6 && echo 1 || echo 0

But be careful in that case. If test returns success and echo 1 fails echo 0 will be executed.

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