STRING1 == STRING2 (conditional operator)

true if the strings are equal.

Bash also allows using ==, but this operator is not included in POSIX. Use = for POSIX compatibility.

Integers are compared with -eq.

Bash

This operator uses pattern matching within a [[ ... ]] construct.

Links

• Bash manual
• Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide
• POSIX specification of test

Examples

Different ways to test if two strings are equal:

1 2 3 4 5

# Bash test "$name" == "John" && echo "it's John!" [ "$name" == "John" ] && echo "it's John!" [[ "$name" == "John" ]] && echo "it's John!" [[ "$name" == "Jan"* ]] && echo "it's Jan or Jane!"