“unary operator expected” error in Bash if condition

Question

I\'ve been trying to figure out whats wrong with this but just can\'t figure it out..

This is the part seems to be getting an error..

elif [ $operati         


        

Answer 1

You can also set a default value for the variable, so you don't need to use two "[", which amounts to two processes ("[" is actually a program) instead of one.

It goes by this syntax: ${VARIABLE:-default}.

The whole thing has to be thought in such a way that this "default" value is something distinct from a "valid" value/content.

If that's not possible for some reason you probably need to add a step like checking if there's a value at all, along the lines of "if [ -z $VARIABLE ] ; then echo "the variable needs to be filled"", or "if [ ! -z $VARIABLE ] ; then #everything is fine, proceed with the rest of the script".