STRING1 != STRING2 (conditional operator)

true if the strings are not equal.

Integers are compared with -ne.

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 not equal:

1 2 3 4

test "$name" != "Jane" && echo "it's not Jane!" [ "$name" != "Jane" ] && echo "it's not Jane!" # Bash [[ "$name" != "Jane" ]] && echo "it's not Jane!"