How to use double or single brackets, parentheses, curly braces

Question

I am confused by the usage of brackets, parentheses, curly braces in Bash, as well as the difference between their double or single forms. Is there a clear explanation?

Answer 1

In Bash, test and [ are shell builtins.

The double bracket, which is a shell keyword, enables additional functionality. For example, you can use && and || instead of -a and -o and there's a regular expression matching operator =~.

Also, in a simple test, double square brackets seem to evaluate quite a lot quicker than single ones.

$ time for ((i=0; i<10000000; i++)); do [[ "$i" = 1000 ]]; done

real    0m24.548s
user    0m24.337s
sys 0m0.036s
$ time for ((i=0; i<10000000; i++)); do [ "$i" = 1000 ]; done

real    0m33.478s
user    0m33.478s
sys 0m0.000s

The braces, in addition to delimiting a variable name are used for parameter expansion so you can do things like:

• Truncate the contents of a variable

  $ var="abcde"; echo ${var%d*}
  abc
  

• Make substitutions similar to sed

  $ var="abcde"; echo ${var/de/12}
  abc12
  

• Use a default value

  $ default="hello"; unset var; echo ${var:-$default}
  hello
  

• and several more

Also, brace expansions create lists of strings which are typically iterated over in loops:

$ echo f{oo,ee,a}d
food feed fad

$ mv error.log{,.OLD}
(error.log is renamed to error.log.OLD because the brace expression
expands to "mv error.log error.log.OLD")

$ for num in {000..2}; do echo "$num"; done
000
001
002

$ echo {00..8..2}
00 02 04 06 08

$ echo {D..T..4}
D H L P T

Note that the leading zero and increment features weren't available before Bash 4.

Thanks to gboffi for reminding me about brace expansions.

Double parentheses are used for arithmetic operations:

((a++))

((meaning = 42))

for ((i=0; i<10; i++))

echo $((a + b + (14 * c)))

and they enable you to omit the dollar signs on integer and array variables and include spaces around operators for readability.

Single brackets are also used for array indices:

array[4]="hello"

element=${array[index]}

Curly brace are required for (most/all?) array references on the right hand side.

ephemient's comment reminded me that parentheses are also used for subshells. And that they are used to create arrays.

array=(1 2 3)
echo ${array[1]}
2

Answer 2

1. A single bracket ([) usually actually calls a program named [; man test or man [ for more info. Example:

   $ VARIABLE=abcdef
   $ if [ $VARIABLE == abcdef ] ; then echo yes ; else echo no ; fi
   yes
   

2. The double bracket ([[) does the same thing (basically) as a single bracket, but is a bash builtin.

   $ VARIABLE=abcdef
   $ if [[ $VARIABLE == 123456 ]] ; then echo yes ; else echo no ; fi
   no
   

3. Parentheses (()) are used to create a subshell. For example:

   $ pwd
   /home/user 
   $ (cd /tmp; pwd)
   /tmp
   $ pwd
   /home/user
   

   As you can see, the subshell allowed you to perform operations without affecting the environment of the current shell.

4. (a) Braces ({}) are used to unambiguously identify variables. Example:

   $ VARIABLE=abcdef
   $ echo Variable: $VARIABLE
   Variable: abcdef
   $ echo Variable: $VARIABLE123456
   Variable:
   $ echo Variable: ${VARIABLE}123456
   Variable: abcdef123456
   

   (b) Braces are also used to execute a sequence of commands in the current shell context, e.g.

   $ { date; top -b -n1 | head ; } >logfile 
   # 'date' and 'top' output are concatenated, 
   # could be useful sometimes to hunt for a top loader )
   
   $ { date; make 2>&1; date; } | tee logfile
   # now we can calculate the duration of a build from the logfile
   

There is a subtle syntactic difference with ( ), though (see bash reference) ; essentially, a semicolon ; after the last command within braces is a must, and the braces {, } must be surrounded by spaces.

Answer 3

Brackets

if [ CONDITION ]    Test construct  
if [[ CONDITION ]]  Extended test construct  
Array[1]=element1   Array initialization  
[a-z]               Range of characters within a Regular Expression
$[ expression ]     A non-standard & obsolete version of $(( expression )) [1]

[1] http://wiki.bash-hackers.org/scripting/obsolete

Curly Braces

${variable}                             Parameter substitution  
${!variable}                            Indirect variable reference  
{ command1; command2; . . . commandN; } Block of code  
{string1,string2,string3,...}           Brace expansion  
{a..z}                                  Extended brace expansion  
{}                                      Text replacement, after find and xargs

Parentheses

( command1; command2 )             Command group executed within a subshell  
Array=(element1 element2 element3) Array initialization  
result=$(COMMAND)                  Command substitution, new style  
>(COMMAND)                         Process substitution  
<(COMMAND)                         Process substitution 

Double Parentheses

(( var = 78 ))            Integer arithmetic   
var=$(( 20 + 5 ))         Integer arithmetic, with variable assignment   
(( var++ ))               C-style variable increment   
(( var-- ))               C-style variable decrement   
(( var0 = var1<98?9:21 )) C-style ternary operation

Answer 4

I just wanted to add these from TLDP:

~:$ echo $SHELL
/bin/bash

~:$ echo ${#SHELL}
9

~:$ ARRAY=(one two three)

~:$ echo ${#ARRAY}
3

~:$ echo ${TEST:-test}
test

~:$ echo $TEST


~:$ export TEST=a_string

~:$ echo ${TEST:-test}
a_string

~:$ echo ${TEST2:-$TEST}
a_string

~:$ echo $TEST2


~:$ echo ${TEST2:=$TEST}
a_string

~:$ echo $TEST2
a_string

~:$ export STRING="thisisaverylongname"

~:$ echo ${STRING:4}
isaverylongname

~:$ echo ${STRING:6:5}
avery

~:$ echo ${ARRAY[*]}
one two one three one four

~:$ echo ${ARRAY[*]#one}
two three four

~:$ echo ${ARRAY[*]#t}
one wo one hree one four

~:$ echo ${ARRAY[*]#t*}
one wo one hree one four

~:$ echo ${ARRAY[*]##t*}
one one one four

~:$ echo $STRING
thisisaverylongname

~:$ echo ${STRING%name}
thisisaverylong

~:$ echo ${STRING/name/string}
thisisaverylongstring

Answer 5

The difference between test, [ and [[ is explained in great details in the BashFAQ.

To cut a long story short: test implements the old, portable syntax of the command. In almost all shells (the oldest Bourne shells are the exception), [ is a synonym for test (but requires a final argument of ]). Although all modern shells have built-in implementations of [, there usually still is an external executable of that name, e.g. /bin/[.

[[ is a new improved version of it, which is a keyword, not a program. This has beneficial effects on the ease of use, as shown below. [[ is understood by KornShell and BASH (e.g. 2.03), but not by the older POSIX or BourneShell.

And the conclusion:

When should the new test command [[ be used, and when the old one [? If portability to the BourneShell is a concern, the old syntax should be used. If on the other hand the script requires BASH or KornShell, the new syntax is much more flexible.

Answer 6

Parentheses in function definition

Parentheses () are being used in function definition:

function_name () { command1 ; command2 ; }

That is the reason you have to escape parentheses even in command parameters:

$ echo (
bash: syntax error near unexpected token `newline'

$ echo \(
(

$ echo () { command echo The command echo was redefined. ; }
$ echo anything
The command echo was redefined.

Answer 7

Truncate the contents of a variable

$ var="abcde"; echo ${var%d*}
abc

Make substitutions similar to sed

$ var="abcde"; echo ${var/de/12}
abc12

Use a default value

$ default="hello"; unset var; echo ${var:-$default}
hello