Is double square brackets [[ ]] preferable over single square brackets [ ] in Bash?

Question

A co-worker claimed recently in a code review that the [[ ]] construct is to be preferred over [ ] in constructs like

if [ \"`id -         


        

Answer 1

A typical situation where you cannot use [[ is in an autotools configure.ac script, there brackets has a special and different meaning, so you will have to use test instead of [ or [[ -- Note that test and [ are the same program.