test Instead of [ ] in Shell ScriptsThis year (2021) I’ve come to hate brackets in shell code. They are much
harder to type quickly, have very sensitive whitespace issues, and
frankly are just butt ugly — especially when you have set -e on,
which gives you a beautiful and readable top-down shell script when done
right.
#!/bin/sh
set -e
test -d ~/repos
cd ~/repos
They also get around the entire globstar expansion issue because you
know that you are dealing with a shell command and not some sort of if
statement. You’re just not. When I have test in front I remember that
everything is still just another shell command and to beware of
globstar.