You are writing a Bash script that must alert administrators when the integer variable sessions reaches or exceeds 50. You decide to use the >= comparison operator and want to avoid spawning any external commands so that the check runs quickly on any GNU/Linux distribution. Which one of the following one-line constructs will perform the test correctly without producing a syntax error?
if (( sessions -ge 50 )); then echo "High load"; fi
if [[ "$sessions" >= 50 ]]; then echo "High load"; fi
if [ "$sessions" >= 50 ]; then echo "High load"; fi
if (( sessions >= 50 )); then echo "High load"; fi
The ((...)) compound command in Bash is used for arithmetic evaluation. Within this context, operators follow C-style semantics, and variables are treated as integers. The >= operator correctly performs a numerical 'greater than or equal to' comparison, so (( sessions >= 50 )) is the correct and most efficient construct. The single-bracket [ (an alias for the test command) does not recognize >= as a comparison operator and requires -ge for numerical comparisons. Using >= inside [ will result in an error. The double-bracket [[...]] construct supports >= for string (lexicographical) comparison, not numerical comparison. For example, [[ "9" >= "50" ]] would evaluate to true because '9' comes after '5' in dictionary order, which is not the desired behavior for integers. Finally, using the -ge test operator inside the arithmetic ((...)) construct is a syntax error, as ((...)) only understands C-style arithmetic operators.
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CompTIA Linux+ XK0-006 (V8)
Automation, Orchestration, and Scripting
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