Why is my string comparison in Bash always evaluated as true?

Question

I have a script checking if a file is up-to-minute.

updatedate=`ls -l file | sed -e \'s/  */ /g\' | cut -d\' \' -f7` #cut the modification time
nowdate=`date         


        

Answer 1

You need a space on each side of the equals sign.

if [ "$updatedate" = "$nowdate" ]

Answer 2

You need to separate all the arguments to test with whitespace. As it stands you have = right up against its two operands so test sees one argument, not the three that you intend.