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I checked a script of mine with checkbashisms and I got the following warnings:
possible bashism in check_ssl_cert line 821 (test -a/-o):
if [ -n "${ALTNAMES}" -a -n "${COMMON_NAME}" ] ; then
In section 4.62.4 of the POSIX specs I find
primary -a primary Performs a binary and of the results of primary and primary. The -a operator has precedence over the -o operator.
Why are -a and -o considered non-portable?
It's not so much that it is not portable, but that there's no [ implementation where it is reliable when passed more than 4 arguments.
Even in bash:
$ ALTNAMES='=' bash -c '[ -n "${ALTNAMES}" -a -n "${COMMON_NAME}" ]'
bash: line 0: [: too many arguments
The related section states:
>4 arguments:
The results are unspecified.
[OB XSI] [Option Start] On XSI-conformant systems, combinations of primaries and operators shall be evaluated using the precedence and associativity rules described previously. In addition, the string comparison binary primaries '=' and "!=" shall have a higher precedence than any unary primary. [Option End]
-a and -o should be banned. The right way is to use the && and || shell operators instead:
if [ -n "$foo" ] && [ -n "$bar" ]; then
I even find it more legible.
-a and -o
– Stéphane Chazelas
Dec 7 '12 at 8:27
[ "x$ALTNAMES" != x -a "x$COMMON_NAME" != x ] (still unspecified as per POSIX but portable and reliable), or [ "${ALTNAMES:+x}${COMMON_NAME:+x}" = xx ]
– Stéphane Chazelas
Dec 7 '12 at 10:40
Because they are an XSI extension, which may or not be implemented. See: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/test.html
