\<
to prevent it redirecting (or switch to [[ .. ]]
) SH-2073if [ "aardvark" < "zebra" ]
then
echo "Alphabetical!"
fi
if [ "aardvark" \< "zebra" ]
then
echo "Alphabetical!"
fi
or optionally in Bash/Ksh:
if [[ "aardvark" < "zebra" ]]
then
echo "Alphabetical!"
fi
You are using the operator <
or >
in a [
test expression.
In this context, it will be considered a file redirection operator instead, so [ "aardvark" < "zebra" ]
is equivalent to [ "aardvark" ] < ./zebra
, which is true if there exists a readable file zebra
in the current directory.
If you wanted to compare two strings lexicographically (alphabetically), escape the <
or >
with a backslash as in the correct example.
If you want to compare two numbers numerically, use -lt
or -ge
instead.