Comment by normie3000

2 days ago

Prefer

  if x then :; else something; fi

over

  if ! x; then something; fi

Really? Colon is the appendix of the shell.

5 comments

normie3000

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bodyfour  2 days ago

The "if !" syntax isn't available on old enough shells.

Probably not an issue for most people in 2026 -- you have to back pretty far for it to be missing. Technically, though, "if x; then :; else" is more portable.

refp  2 days ago

First of all, I must salute you on the joke; well put haha!

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It is a (contrived) example of usage where a command is required and `:` can fill in the blanks. There are certainly scenarios where negating an expression becomes harder than doing the "dumb" way, and I for one has written code where `:` can be used as a placeholder meaning "fill this in later" or equivalent.

With that said, 100% agree with you that in actual "production" code - there is always a cleaner way.