[lmi] Shell scripting bafflement

[Greg Chicares]

Vadim--Sorry to bother you with this, but I just can't see why
these two nearly-identical commands behave oppositely, and I'm
sure you'll know why.

This does exactly what I expect, as [non]gnu.org is certainly
reachable on my machine:

/home/greg[0]$if curl https://git.savannah.nongnu.org:443 >/dev/null 2>&1 ; 
then      
  echo true
else
  echo false
fi

true

But if I enclose the command in "[ $(...) ]", it "fails":

/home/greg[0]$
/home/greg[0]$if [ $(curl https://git.savannah.nongnu.org:443 >/dev/null 2>&1) 
]; then
  echo true
else
  echo false
fi

false