16.3.6 Connectives for test

It is better to use shell logical primitives rather than these logical connectives internal to test, because an expression may become ambiguous depending on the expansion of its parameters.

For example, this becomes ambiguous when ‘$1’ is set to ‘'!'’ and ‘$2’ to the empty string ‘''’:

test "$1" -a "$2"

and should be written as:

test "$1" && test "$2"

The shell logical primitives also benefit from short circuit operation, which can be significant for file attribute tests.

‘! expr’ ¶

True if expr is false. ‘!’ has lower precedence than all parts of expr. The ‘!’ should be specified to the left of a binary expression, I.e., ‘! 1 -gt 2’ rather than ‘1 ! -gt 2’.

‘expr1 -a expr2’ ¶

True if both expr1 and expr2 are true. ‘-a’ is left associative, and has a higher precedence than ‘-o’.

‘expr1 -o expr2’ ¶

True if either expr1 or expr2 is true. ‘-o’ is left associative.