Conditionals: if/then/else

A Bash if statement is usually found in this form:

if [[ $TEST ]]; then $STATEMENTS else $OTHER_STATEMENTS fi

Remember a few things about this form before we look at examples:

• if and fi begin and terminate the if block, respectively.
• ; delimits statements in Bash; add one right after the test.
• [[ and ]] delimit your test expression.
• The else clause is optional.

Here’s what the if statement looks like in Bash:

if [[ -e "example.txt" ]]; then
    echo "The file exists!"

ifelse

If you want to tack an else clause onto this structure, you can!

if [[ -e "example.txt" ]]; then
    echo "The file exists!"
else
    echo "The file does not exist!"
fi