Learn Linux Shell Scripting - Fundamentals of Bash 4.4

The elif condition

In the scenarios we've seen up until now, there was only ever the need to check for one if condition. But as you might expect, sometimes, there are multiple things that you want to check for, each with their own sets of following actions (then block). You could solve this by using two full if-then-else statements, but at the very least you'd have a duplicate else block. Even worse, if you have three or more conditions you want to check for, you'll have more and more duplicate code! Luckily for us, we can solve this by using the elif command, which is part of the if-then-else logic. As you've probably guessed, elif is short for else-if. It allows us to do something like the following:

IF condition1, THEN do thing1, ELIF ...