Integer comparison in bash

Question

I need to implement something like:

if [ $i -ne $hosts_count - 1] ; then
    cmd="$cmd;"
fi

But I get

./installer.sh: line 124: [: missing `]'

What I am doing wrong?

Answer 1

The command [ can't handle arithmetics inside its test. Change it to:

if [ $i -ne $((hosts_count-1)) ]; then

Edit: what @cebewee wrote is also true; you must put a space in front of the closing ]. But, just doing that will result in yet another error: extra argument '-'

Answer 2

1. The ] must be a separate argument to [.

2. You're assuming you can do math in [.

   if [ $i -ne $(($hosts_count - 1)) ] ; then