Bash convention for if ; then

Question

From this web page :

http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/abs-guide.html

It\'s mentioned the usage of the if bracket then convention which need a space after the semicol

Answer 1

This has become the style in the last few years:

if [ -x "$filename" ]; then
   echo "hi"
fi

However, back when dinosaurs like Burroughs and Sperry Rand ruled the earth, I learned to write if statements like this:

if [ -x "$filename" ]
then
    echo "hi"
fi

Then, you don't even need a semicolon.

The new style with then on the same line as the if started in order to emulate the way C and other programming languages did their if statements:

if (! strcmp("foo", "bar")) {
   printf "Strings equal\n";
}

These programming languages put the opening curly brace on the same line as the if.