On Sun Jun 14 14:12:13 PDT 2015, [email protected] wrote:
> Why doesn't the plan9 test program have features for checking
> inequalities (i.e. greater than etc.)?
> What do you guys do when you want to test for inequality?
> 
> Maybe the most convenient way to do that in the shell would be if I
> made two tiny programs, lt & gt which would check their two arguments.

to be more pedantic than necessary, test is not part of the plan 9 shell.
the ~ operator is the way to test for (string) equality or inequality.
! is shell negation, so for non-negative integral x,

~ $x [1-3]      -> x < 4
! ~ $x [1-3]    -> x >= 4

the shell doesn't understand numbers.

outside the shell, hoc or awk are alternatives to test

- erik

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