Skip to content
Lawrence Velázquez edited this page Mar 9, 2024 · 2 revisions

In POSIX sh, unary -v (in place of [ -n "${var+x}" ]) is undefined.

Problematic code:

#!/bin/sh
if [ -v STY ]
then
  echo "STY is set, you are using screen"
fi

Correct code:

Either switch to bash or ksh, or use:

#!/bin/sh
if [ -n "${STY+x}" ]
then
  echo "STY is set, you are using screen"
fi

Rationale:

Your script uses a shell feature not supported by the shebang. Either rewrite the script to be portable, or change the shebang to explicitly require a shell like Bash.

In this case, [ -v variable ], which checks if a variable is set, is not specified by POSIX. It can be replaced with the portable [ -n "${variable+x}" ], which uses the "alternative value if set" parameter expansion syntax to accomplish the same thing.

Exceptions:

None

Related resources:

  • Help by adding links to BashFAQ, StackOverflow, man pages, POSIX, etc!

ShellCheck

Each individual ShellCheck warning has its own wiki page like SC1000. Use GitHub Wiki's "Pages" feature guerraart8 to find a specific , or see Checks.

Clone this wiki locally