---
tags:
  - Programming_Languages
  - shell
---

## If statements

* Conditional blocks start with `if` and end with the inversion `fi` (this is a common syntactic pattern in bash)
* The conditional expression must be placed in square brackets with spaces either side. The spaces matter: if you omit them, the code will not run
* We designate the code to run when the conditional is met with `then`
* We can incorporate else if logic with `elif`