Thanks for the detailed explanation Eric! That really helped clear my doubts. Also tried with "0x" and it's working fine however, as suggested by you, i will use '=' Thanks again! :) On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 4:17 AM, Eric Sunshine <sunshine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Mon, Aug 10, 2015 at 6:29 PM, Jacob Keller <jacob.keller@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> On Mon, Aug 10, 2015 at 2:54 AM, Gaurav Chhabra >> <varuag.chhabra@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >>> Apologies for the delay in reply! I tried your suggestion and it >>> works. Thanks! :) >>> >>> I'm curious why integer comparison is throwing error. Shouldn't i be >>> comparing numbers with numeric operator? >> >> Yes, but shell doesn't treat hex numbers as numbers. So it will work >> only if the string is a decimal number. > > This particular case deserves a bit more explanation. The expression > in question was this: > > if [[ "$new_sha" -eq "$NULL" ]]; then > > where 'new_sha' was 9226289d2416af4cb7365d7aaa5e382bdb3d9a89. > > In Bash, inside the [[ .. ]], it did attempt evaluating the SHA1 as a > *decimal* number, however, when it encountered the "d", it complained > that it was outside the allowed range of decimal digits ("0"..."9"). > Had the SHA1 been prefixed by a "0x", the [[...]] context would have > dealt with it just fine. > > Outside the [[...]] context, arguments to -eq do need to be base-10 integers. > > Nevertheless, a SHA1 is effective an opaque value. There's little, if > anything, to be gained by treating it as a numeric quantity, hence > string '=' makes more sense than numeric '-eq'. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html