Testing Your Knowledge of Tests

7.5. Testing Your Knowledge of Tests

The systemwide xinitrc file can be used to launch the X server. This file contains quite a number of if/then tests. The following is excerpted from an "ancient" version of xinitrc (Red Hat 7.1, or thereabouts).

if [ -f $HOME/.Xclients ]; then
  exec $HOME/.Xclients
elif [ -f /etc/X11/xinit/Xclients ]; then
  exec /etc/X11/xinit/Xclients
else
     # failsafe settings.  Although we should never get here
     # (we provide fallbacks in Xclients as well) it can't hurt.
     xclock -geometry 100x100-5+5 &
     xterm -geometry 80x50-50+150 &
     if [ -f /usr/bin/netscape -a -f /usr/share/doc/HTML/index.html ]; then
             netscape /usr/share/doc/HTML/index.html &
     fi
fi

Explain the test constructs in the above snippet, then examine an updated version of the file, /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc, and analyze the if/then test constructs there. You may need to refer ahead to the discussions of grep, sed, and regular expressions.


74 visits (1 today, 9 this week, 12 this month, 74 this year)
Uptime: 04:42:46 up 6 days, 18:36, 4 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
18.221.227.158 GET from server z.larrymurakami.com

Friday, May 9, 2025 @ 4:42:46 AM
z.ServerAdmin@lam1.us