On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 11:54 PM, Always Learning <centos at u64.u22.net> wrote: > >> And third, you generally should use >> double quotes around variables in tests so they continue to exist as >> an empty string if the variable happens to not be set. > > Thanks for that. I assumed if test 1 worked, so would test 2. > > Have re-run test 2 with > > >> 16 if [ $file = "law00css" ] You still missed the part about quoting variables. You quote plain strings to hold embedded spaces together (or single-quotes to avoid parsing metacharacters). You use double quotes around $variables so they don't disappear completely if the variable isn't set, causing a syntax error. To understand it completely you need to know the order of operations as the shell makes multiple passes over the line, parsing, processing metacharacters, and expanding variables. And I don't know where to find a concise description of that any more. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com