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Bug 845927

Summary:	test -n always returns 0 if evaluating variable
Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5	Reporter:	Martin Kyral <mkyral>
Component:	coreutils	Assignee:	Ondrej Vasik <ovasik>
Status:	CLOSED NOTABUG	QA Contact:	qe-baseos-daemons
Severity:	unspecified	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	5.8	CC:	kdudka, maxamillion, meyering, ovasik, p, twaugh
Target Milestone:	rc
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	Unspecified
OS:	Unspecified
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:	845925	Environment:
Last Closed:	2012-08-06 07:30:04 UTC	Type:	Bug
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On:	845925
Bug Blocks:

Description Martin Kyral 2012-08-06 07:16:22 UTC

+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #845925 +++

Description of problem:
According to the man page, "test -n STRING" returns true (0) if the STRING's length is non-zero and that it equivalent to "test STRING" (and contrary to "test -z STRING").

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
coreutils-5.97-34.el5

How reproducible:
Always


Steps to Reproduce:
1. VAR=''
2. test -n $VAR ; echo $?
3. test $VAR ; echo $?

  
Actual results:
In step 2, the output is 0 (true in shell semantics).


Expected results:
In step 2, the output is 0 (false in shell semantics).

Additional info:
"test -n $VAR" returns 0 on both empty and non-empty string $VAR value. "test $VAR" and "test -z $VAR" give the expected values, ie. 0,1 on non-empty and 1,0 on empty $VAR values. Also, "test -n" gives correct output if a direct value is given.

Comment 1 Martin Kyral 2012-08-06 07:24:07 UTC

Expected results:
In step 2, the output is 1 (false in shell semantics).

Sorry for the typo..

Comment 2 Kamil Dudka 2012-08-06 07:30:04 UTC

see bug #845925 comment #2