The variable COUNT holds a decimal integer. Which THREE conditions are true exactly when COUNT is greater than 10? (Choose three.)
LPIC-1 Exam 102-500, objective 105. Shells and shell scripting medium
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How these questions are written — where each question comes from, what the verification ledger records, and what happens when one is found wrong.
The options
Choose 3.
Correct [ "$COUNT" -gt 10 ]
Correct. -gt is the arithmetic greater-than operator of test, and it compares the two operands as integers.
Correct [[ $COUNT -gt 10 ]]
Correct. The bash conditional construct supports the same arithmetic operators, and it performs no word splitting on the variable, so the quotes are not required here.
Correct (( COUNT > 10 ))
Correct. Inside an arithmetic evaluation the operands are integers and > is a numeric comparison. The construct returns exit status 0 when the expression is non-zero, that is, when it is true.
Not correct [ "$COUNT" > 10 ]
Wrong, and silently so. Inside [ ] the > is still a redirection operator, so the shell creates a file named 10 and hands test a single argument, which it reports as true for any non-empty string.
Not correct [ "$COUNT" -ge 10 ]
Wrong. -ge is greater than or equal, so it is also true when COUNT is exactly 10, which the question excludes.
Why
test and [ compare integers with -eq, -ne, -lt, -le, -gt, -ge, and strings with =, != and the ordering operators; using the wrong family is the classic error, since = compares text so that 9 = 09 is false and 10 sorts before 9. The symbols <, >, ( and ) must be escaped or quoted inside [ ] because the shell parses them first, which is why [[ ]] and (( )) exist. Only (( )) treats the bare name COUNT as a variable reference without a dollar sign.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- manual page bash(1)
Practise this
Reading one question is not practice. The trainer will draw a short set from objective 105 and space the ones you get wrong.
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