Bash if statements: the unglamorous foundation of enterprise automation
Bash if statements remain the backbone of Linux automation, powering roughly 70% of Unix/Linux scripts according to Stack Overflow's 2024 developer survey. For APAC enterprises where 65% run production workloads on Linux (IDC APAC 2025), understanding these fundamentals matters.
The basics
If statements execute code when a condition is true. The syntax is straightforward:
num=15
if [ $num -gt 10 ]; then
echo "Number is greater than 10"
fi
Conditions sit in square brackets [ ], statements close with fi. Simple, but the simplicity is deceptive.
What enterprise teams get wrong
Three common mistakes show up in production scripts:
Quoting errors:
[ ]syntax breaks with spaces in variables. The[[ ]]syntax handles this better, a detail that matters when scripts fail at 3am.Exit code assumptions: Scripts often don't check return codes properly. In CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitLab), this means silent failures that surface later.
File existence checks: Testing if files exist (
-f), directories exist (-d), or handling symlinks (-L) trips up junior engineers. The trending searches on "bash check if file exists" reflect real pain points.
When Bash isn't enough
Some teams avoid Bash for complex logic, preferring Python or Ansible. Fair point. Bash's error handling is primitive and word-splitting issues are real. But for server management, DevOps automation, and cloud provisioning across AWS APAC regions or Alibaba Cloud, it's unavoidable.
Linux runs roughly 80% of cloud servers (451 Research, 2023). Your team needs to handle Bash competently, even if they prefer other tools for orchestration.
The real cost
Poorly written conditional logic doesn't just break builds. It delays deployments, creates security gaps when permission checks fail, and wastes senior engineer time debugging.
For infrastructure teams: audit your scripts. For hiring managers: test candidates on this. The basics matter because everything depends on them.
Not exciting. Essential.