Shell Scripting: Expert Recipes for Linux, Bash, and More

Chapter 5

Conditional Execution

Conditional execution means that you can choose to execute code only if certain conditions are met. Without this capability, all you would be able to do is execute one command after another after another. The ability to test a variety of things about the state of the system, and of the environment variables of the process, means that a shell script can do far more powerful things than would otherwise be possible.