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lang-bash
$?is equal to 0 with anifstatement is pointless,ifexpects a command and if said command returns0, it runs the code in the block. soif true; then echo hello; fiwill echo hello since the commandtruereturned0.$?holds the status of the last pipeline, which is not thetest([) command in theifstatement. The example is testing whethersome commandwas successful. You can do the same with&&and||, but it can make long, unreadable lines compared toif [ $? -eq 0 ]. The same argument goes forif some command$?expands to, i am pointing out there is no point in thetestbeing used; sinceif some commanddoes the same thing with one statement versus having two separate statements. if the command is already long, adding three more characters wouldn't make the 'unreadable' terribly more 'unreadable'.