binary operator expected error when checking if a file with full pathname exists

Question

pathname=$(cat $HOME/.rm.cfg)
if [ ! -z $pathname/$1 ]

.rm.cfg is a file that contains the following directory

/home/username/deleted1

$1 is the name of a file eg. glass

why does the line if [ ! -z $pathname/$1 ] give a binary operator expected error.

Answer 1

Looks like your $pathname includes more than one word. Could be multiple lines in your .rm.cfg file, or perhaps the path includes spaces. Anyway, you end up with

if [ ! -z word word word/$1 ]

which is no good. If you're just expecting a single path and want to protect against the path containing whitespace, change your if line to

if [ ! -z "$pathname/$1" ]

Answer 2

I had faced the same error (binary operator expected) when receiving more than one word for some variable when using it as shown below:

if [ ! -z ${variable} ];

So to resolve this error I changed it to:

if [[ ! -z ${variable} ]];