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What is the difference between ampersand and semicolon in Linux Bash?
For example,
$ command1 && command2
vs
$ command1; command2
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In programming, a double ampersand is used to represent the Boolean AND operator such as in the C statement, if (x >= 100 && x >= 199). In HTML, the ampersand is used to code foreign letters and special characters such as the copyright and trademark symbols. See ampersand codes and address operator.
What does the “&&” do? The double-ampersand is an operator telling the bash terminal to first execute the command before the && operator and if that command was successfully executed without any errors, then go ahead and execute the command after the “&&” operator.
In Bash—and many other programming languages— && means “AND”. And in command execution context like this, it means items to the left as well as right of && should be run in sequence in this case.
The && operator is a boolean AND operator: if the left side returns a non-zero exit status, the operator returns that status and does not evaluate the right side (it short-circuits), otherwise it evaluates the right side and returns its exit status. This is commonly used to make sure that command2 is only run if command1 ran successfully.
The ; token just separates commands, so it will run the second command regardless of whether or not the first one succeeds.
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command1 && command2 executes command2 if (and only if) command1 execution ends up successfully. In Unix jargon, that means exit code / return code equal to zero.
command1; command2 executes command2 after executing command1, sequentially. It does not matter whether the commands were successful or not.
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