"[: too many arguments" if statement if [ "$FILE" == "XXXX"* ] || [ "$FILE" == "YYYY"* ] || [ "$FILE" == "ZZZZ"* ] ||

Question

I am not sure what s wrong with my below script even I removed whitespaces but I am still getting below error "[: too many arguments"

oldPlugin="/old/plugins/"
cd "$oldPlugin" || true
for FILE in *; do
  if [ "$FILE" == "csharp-plugin"* ] || [ "$FILE" == "flex-plugin"* ] || [ "$FILE" == "go-plugin"* ] || [ "$FILE" == "html-plugin"* ] || [ "$FILE" == "iac-plugin"* ] || [ "$FILE" == "jacoco-plugin"* ] || [ "$FILE" == "java-plugin"* ] || [ "$FILE" == "javascript-plugin"* ] || [ "$FILE" == "kotlin-plugin"* ] || [ "$FILE" == "php-plugin"* ] || [ "$FILE" == "python-plugin"* ] || [ "$FILE" == "ruby-plugin"* ] || [ "$FILE" == "scala-plugin"* ] || [ "$FILE" == "vbnet-plugin"* ] || [ "$FILE" == "xml-plugin"* ]; then
    rm -rf "$extensionPlugin"/"$FILE"
 fi
done

if I do rm -rf with specified files it removes, but when I add if condition it gives me error, also if I keep let say 5 or 6 file names in if condition it works but if I keep more than that it gives me error,

Do I need to short if condition or need to have another condition, Please help

Regards

Answer 1

There's the [[ var = pattern ]] or [[ var == pattern ]] operator of the Korn shell (also supported by a few other shells these days, but not part of the standard sh syntax), and there's the [ command that supports the = operator for string equality comparison.

Some [ implementations support a == operator as well but that's just as an alias to = for string equality, not pattern matching. Some [ implementations like the [ builtin of yash or zsh support a =~ operator for regexp matching, but again, that's not available in standard sh + utilities syntax.

[ being just a ordinary command,

[ "$FILE" == "csharp-plugin"* ]

Is interpreted the same as:

echo "$FILE" == "csharp-plugin"* ]

Or any simple command, and "csharp-plugin"* is expanded by the shell to the list of file names in the current directory that start with csharp-plugin via a mechanism called globbing or filename generation or pathname expansion and pass them as separate arguments to [.

So if the current directory contained csharp-plugin1 and csharp-plugin2, [ would be called with [, csharp-plugin1, ==, csharp-plugin1, csharp-plugin2 and ] as arguments, and complain about that extra csharp-plugin2 argument which it can't make sense of.

Pattern matching in sh is done with the case construct.

oldPlugin="/old/plugins/"
cd -- "$oldPlugin" || exit
for FILE in *; do
  case "$FILE" in
    (csharp-plugin* | flex-plugin* | go-plugin* |...)
      rm -rf -- "$extensionPlugin"/"$FILE";;
  esac
done

If you wanted to use a if, construct, you could define a helper function such as:

match()
  case $1 in
    ($2) true;;
    (*) false;;
  esac

And use it as:

if match "$FILE" 'csharp-plugin*' || match...; then
  ...
fi

In the Korn shell, or with the bash shell and after shopt -s extglob (not needed in recent versions of bash) or with zsh and after set -o kshglob), you could also do:

if [[ $FILE = @(csharp|flex|go|...)-plugin* ]]; then...

In zsh, without kshglob, alternation is done simply with:

if [[ $FILE = (csharp|flex|go|...)-plugin* ]]; then...

In sh, you could simplify a bit with:

oldPlugin="/old/plugins/"
cd -- "$oldPlugin" || exit
for FILE in *-plugin*; do
  case "${FILE%%-plugin*}" in
    (csharp | flex | go |...)
      rm -rf -- "$extensionPlugin"/"$FILE";;
  esac
done