Looks like your depth
variable is unset. This means that the expression [ $depth -eq $zero ]
becomes [ -eq 0 ]
after bash substitutes the values of the variables into the expression. The problem here is that the -eq
operator is incorrectly used as an operator with only one argument (the zero), but it requires two arguments. That is why you get the unary operator error message.
EDIT: As Doktor J mentioned in his comment to this answer, a safe way to avoid problems with unset variables in checks is to enclose the variables in ""
. See his comment for the explanation.
if [ "$depth" -eq "0" ]; then
echo "false";
exit;
fi
An unset variable used with the [
command appears empty to bash. You can verify this using the below tests which all evaluate to true
because xyz
is either empty or unset:
if [ -z ] ; then echo "true"; else echo "false"; fi
xyz=""; if [ -z "$xyz" ] ; then echo "true"; else echo "false"; fi
unset xyz; if [ -z "$xyz" ] ; then echo "true"; else echo "false"; fi