How does nested if/then/elseif work in bash? [closed]

Question

How does the syntax work in bash? This is my pseudocode for C style if else statements. For instance:

If (condition)     then     echo "do this stuff"  elseif (condition)     echo "do this stuff"  elseif (condition)     echo "do this stuff"      if(condition)         then         echo "this is nested inside"     else         echo "this is nested inside"  else     echo "not nested" 

Answer 1

I guess your question is about the dangling else ambiguity contained in many grammars; in bash there isn't such a thing. Every if has to be delimited by a companion fi marking the end of the if block.

Given this fact (besides other syntactic errors) you'll notice your example isn't a valid bash script. Trying to fix some of the errors, you might get something like this

if condition     then     echo "do this stuff"  elif condition     then     echo "do this stuff"  elif condition     then     echo "do this stuff"     if condition         then         echo "this is nested inside"     # this else _without_ any ambiguity binds to the if directly above as there was     # no fi closing the inner block     else         echo "this is nested inside"      #   else     #       echo "not nested"     #  as given in your example is syntactically not correct !     #  We have to close the  last if block first as there's only one else allowed in any block.    fi # now we can add your else .. else    echo "not nested" # ... which should be followed by another fi fi