bash doesn’t know boolean variables, nor does test
(which is what gets called when you use [
).
A solution would be:
if $myVar ; then ... ; fi
because true
and false
are commands that return 0
or 1
respectively which is what if
expects.
Note that the values are “swapped”. The command after if
must return 0
on success while 0
means “false” in most programming languages.
SECURITY WARNING: This works because BASH expands the variable, then tries to execute the result as a command! Make sure the variable can’t contain malicious code like rm -rf /