Re: [Gnu-arch-users] bash scripting conditionals: "-a" vs "-e"

[Zenaan Harkness]

On Sat, 2004-11-13 at 08:51, Miles Bader wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 13, 2004 at 08:04:57AM +1100, Zenaan Harkness wrote:
> > Well that seems to be the functionality, but the docs tell otherwise,
> > both info and man include the following:
> > 
> >        -a file
> >               True if file exists.
> 
> But I don't think anybody uses it, they use -e.
> 
> I suppose the unary -a is for compability with some crufty old version of
> test, or a mistake...

There is no apparent distinction between the two, according to the docs
(which is at least a bug), and I just checked the bash3-doc docs which
also include the same buggy information.