Mac OS X Tiger in a Nutshell

Name

if

Synopsis

                     
                        if
                      
                     test-cmds

Begin a conditional statement. The possible formats, shown here side by side, are:

    if test-cmds    if test-cmds      if test-cmds
       then            then             then
          cmds1          
                     cmds1             
                     cmds1
    fi                 else             elif test-cmds
                          cmds2            then
                    fi                        cmds2
                                              ...
                                        else
                                           cmdsn
                                      fi

Usually, the initial if and any elif lines execute one test or [ ] command (although any series of commands is permitted). When if succeeds (that is, the last of its test-cmds returns 0), cmds1 are performed; otherwise, each succeeding elif or else line is tried.