shell - Null & empty string comparison in Bash

Question

(This question already has answers here): question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21407235/null-empty-string-comparison-in-bash

Answer 1

First of all, note you are not using the variable correctly:

if [ "pass_tc11" != "" ]; then
#     ^
#     missing $

Anyway, to check if a variable is empty or not you can use -z --> the string is empty:

if [ ! -z "$pass_tc11" ]; then
   echo "hi, I am not empty"
fi

or -n --> the length is non-zero:

if [ -n "$pass_tc11" ]; then
   echo "hi, I am not empty"
fi

From man test:

-z STRING

the length of STRING is zero

-n STRING

the length of STRING is nonzero

Samples:

$ [ ! -z "$var" ] && echo "yes"
$

$ var=""
$ [ ! -z "$var" ] && echo "yes"
$

$ var="a"
$ [ ! -z "$var" ] && echo "yes"
yes

$ var="a"
$ [ -n "$var" ] && echo "yes"
yes