16.3.5 Numeric tests

Numeric relational operators. The arguments must be entirely numeric (possibly negative), or the special expression -l string, which evaluates to the length of string.

‘arg1 -eq arg2’ ¶

‘arg1 -ne arg2’

‘arg1 -lt arg2’

‘arg1 -le arg2’

‘arg1 -gt arg2’

‘arg1 -ge arg2’

These arithmetic binary operators return true if arg1 is equal, not-equal, less-than, less-than-or-equal, greater-than, or greater-than-or-equal than arg2, respectively.

For example:

test -1 -gt -2 && echo yes
⇒ yes
test -l abc -gt 1 && echo yes
⇒ yes
test 0x100 -eq 1
error→ test: integer expression expected before -eq