Question

In this Bash Shell script I like to check if the length of the string is zero. In that case the script should echo an error message and exit.

dbname="ssss"
dbuser=""

if [ -z "$dbname"]
then
        echo "DB name is not specified!"
        exit
fi

if [ -z "$dbuser"]
then
        echo "DB user is not specified!"
        exit
fi

If dbname is “” it works as expected. But if it has some value and I was expecting to see it exit at the next conditional, I get this error message:

Script.sh: line 4: [: missing `]'
DB user is not specified!

Why the error message?

Answer 1

[ -z "$dbuser"]

should be

[ -z "$dbuser" ]
# note: ------^