Mastering Linux Shell Scripting - Second Edition

Extending if with else

When a script is required to continue regardless of the result of the if condition, it is often necessary to deal with both conditions of the evaluation, what to do when it is true as well as false. This is where we can make use of the else keyword. This allows the execution of one block of code when the condition is true and another when the condition is evaluated as false. The pseudocode for this is shown as follows:

if condition; then 
   statement 
else  
   statement 
fi 

If we consider extending the hello5.sh script that we created earlier, it is easily possible to allow for the correct execution, regardless of the parameter being present or not. We can recreate this as hello6.sh, as follows:

#!/bin/bash # Welcome script ...