IFTHENELSE(1)

🌸 NAME 🌸

The General Commands Manual page IFTHENELSE(1) is all about ifthenelse(1) — perform a conditional alternative, bestie!! 💅 It’s the “pick a path” girlie of execline, and yes, she ate. ✨

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

In an execlineb(1) script:

ifthenelse [-X] [-s] { progif... } { progthen... } { progelse... }
           prog...

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

Okay so ifthenelse reads progif..., progthen..., and progelse... in 3 consecutive blocks (cf. execline-block(7)). Three blocks, three vibes, one conditional. 🎀

First up: it runs progif... as a child process and waits for it to complete. Like, actually waits. 👑

If progif... crashes — i.e. it’s killed by a signal — ifthenelse prints an error message, then exits 128 plus the number of the signal that killed progif. That’s the dramatic part, and yes, it means exactly what it says. 💀

If progif... exits zero, ifthenelse runs progthen... as a child process; else it runs progelse.... Simple as that, no cap. 🌈

Then ifthenelse waits for its child to complete and puts the exit status in the ? environment variable. After that, it exec(3)s into prog.... Bye bestie, it’s prog...’s turn now. 🫶

💅 OPTIONS 💅

• -X — if progif crashes, do not exit; proceed as if it had returned false. 🙈
• -s — magic scoping hack. This option does powerful but ugly things, and is left undocumented on purpose. So obviously we’re not gonna spill the tea; it’s on purpose. 💀

🌟 SEE ALSO 🌟

background(1), backtick(1), foreground(1), if(1), ifelse(1), ifte(1), pipeline(1), runblock(1)

This man page is ported from the authoritative documentation at: https://skarnet.org/software/execline/ifthenelse.html ✨

👑 AUTHORS 👑

Laurent Bercot Alexis <flexibeast@gmail.com> (man page port)

And that’s the whole page, bestie!! 🎀 This iconic page was brought to you by Debian, dated February 14, 2021 — mwah, kisses, happy scripting!! 💖