SC2203 – ShellCheck Wiki

Sitemap

Globs are ignored in [[ ]] except right of =/!=. Use a loop.

Problematic code:

[[ current.log -nt backup/*.log ]] && echo "This is the latest file"

Correct code:

newerThanAll=true
for log in backup/*.log
do
  [[ current.log -nt "$log" ]] || newerThanAll=false
done
[[ "$newerThanAll" = "true" ]] && echo "This is the latest file"

Rationale:

Globs in [[ ]] will not filename expand, and will be treated literally (or as patterns on the right-hand side of =, == and !=).

The problematic code is equivalent to [[ current.log -nt 'backup/*.png' ], and will look for a file with a literal asterisk in the name.

Instead, you can iterate over the filenames you want with a loop, and apply your condition to each filename.

Exceptions:

None.

ShellCheck is a static analysis tool for shell scripts. This page is part of its documentation.