test command looks strange...

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

I just ran into this today, and don't know what to make of it...

if test x$SERVER = x
then
        echo $USAGE
        exit 1
fi

I know what everything in there does, except for the 'x' jazz...

2

It is effecitvely doing

if test "$SERVER" = ""
then
     ....

rather than using quotes, it prefixes an x to the string to ensure it's not an empty string argument. Where it falls down of course is if there is a space in $SERVER.

3

hahahaha... of course, the obvious answer escapes me.

I didn't even think of it as concatenation till you mentioned that.

Thank you