Re: [bash 4] 'test -v 1' is never true

[Alex Colomar]

Hi Martin,

On 11/27/22 17:53, Martin D Kealey wrote:
> The expansion `$[var+replacement}` was part of the Bourne shell when I 
> used it in 1985 (before POSIX was first published),

I didn't know that; interesting.  Still looks ugly/convoluted to me to 
use that feature here.  Might be useful if I didn't had another tool...

> whereas `test A -gt 
> B` is rather newer,

Being POSIX, it's old enough for my taste :)

> and `test -v` is only a Bash extension (and 
> similarly wasn't added until later).

Yeah, I started using that for consistency with other -v tests.  In 
fact, the first time I used it instead of $#, I wasn't sure if it would 
work.

I think $# wins for me.

Thanks!

Alex

> The man and info pages have retained the rather terse descriptions of 
> those oldest expansions, and they are buried in the sheer volume of the 
> current documentation.
>
>
> On Sun, 27 Nov 2022 at 23:00, Alejandro Colomar <alx.manpages@gmail.com 
> <mailto:alx.manpages@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     Hi Alexey,
>
>     On 11/27/22 12:41, Alexey wrote:
>      > On 2022-11-26 21:45, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
>      >> That was my gut; thanks!  I'll workaround with $#.
>      >
>      > I could suggest you to use for clarity another construction:
>      > [[ ${1+isset} ]] || echo "not set"
>      >
>      > Here "isset" is just for readability. You could place any other
>     string literal
>      > there.
>
>     I actually find that very confusing.  What feature is it using?  I
>     couldn't find
>     it with `info bash | less` then `/\+`.
>
>           test $# -ge 1
>
>     has the benefit that it's just a sed(1) away from my old
>
>           test -v 1
>
>     And it only needs the following to be understood:
>
>           man test | grep -A1 ' -ge '
>           man sh | grep '   # '
>
>     The old version (test -v 1) required:
>
>           help test | grep ' -v '
>           man sh | sed -n '/^   Positional/,/^$/p'
>
>     Both are easy to find.
>
>      >
>      > Regards,
>      > Alexey.
>
>     Cheers,
>
>     Alex
>
>     -- 
>     <http://www.alejandro-colomar.es/ <http://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>>

--
<http://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>

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