While learning a bit about bash , I come to see four types of

Question

Editorial Team

Asked: June 12, 20262026-06-12T09:56:18+00:00 2026-06-12T09:56:18+00:00

While learning a bit about bash, I come to see four types of ways of working with if statements:

What is the difference between Parenthesis and Square Brackets in bash.

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

Editorial Team · Answer 1 · 2026-06-12T09:56:19+00:00

The tests you had listed :

Single Parenthesis – ( … ) is creating a subshell
Double Parenthesis – (( … )) is for arithmetic operation
Single Square Bracket – [ … ] is the syntax for the POSIX test
Double Square Brackets – [[ … ]] is the syntax for bash conditional expressions (similar to test but more powerful)

are not exhaustive, you can use boolean logic

if command; then ...

too, because the commands have exit status. In bash, 0 is true and > 0 is false.

You can see the exit status like this :

command
echo $?

See :

The Archive Base Latest Questions