What is the difference between "else if" and "elif" in bash?

I've got the following shell script that's supposed to simply stage a few Java .ear/.war files to JBoss:

SUCCESS=false
DEPLOY_PATH=/apps/jboss/server/default/deploy

E_NOARGS=75
M_USAGE="usage: $0 {rcm|hcm}"
M_MISSING_RCM="missing: rcm.war file not present"
M_MISSING_HCM="missing: hcm.ear or hcm.war file not present"

if [ -z "$1" ] 
then
  echo $M_USAGE
  exit $E_NOARGS
else
  M_START="deploying $1 ..."
  M_FINISH="finished deploying $1"
fi

until [ -z "$1" ]
do
  echo $M_START 
  case "$1" in
    rcm*)
      # do a hot-deploy of the rcm.war file
      # TODO: test if rcm.war file is present, error out if not
      if [ -e rcm.war ]
      then 
        cp -v rcm.war $DEPLOY_PATH/rcm.war
        SUCCESS=true
      else
        echo $M_MISSING_RCM
      fi
      ;;
    hcm*)
      # do a shutdown, deploy hcm.war, and restart jboss
      ps -ef | awk '/jboss/{print $2}' | xargs kill -s KILL

      HCM_DEPLOYED=false

      if [ -e hcm.ear ]
      then
        cp -v hcm.ear $DEPLOY_PATH/hcm.ear
        HCM_DEPLOYED=true
      else
        if [ -e hcm.war ]
        then
          cp -v hcm.war $DEPLOY_PATH/hcm.war
          HCM_DEPLOYED=true
        else 
          echo $M_MISSING_HCM
        fi
      fi

      if $HCM_DEPLOYED ;
      then
        # TODO: detect the hostname
        nohup /apps/jboss/bin/run.sh -b <HOSTNAME> & &> /dev/null
        SUCCESS=true
      fi
      ;;
    *)
      echo $M_USAGE
      exit 1
  esac
  shift
done

if $SUCCESS ;
then
  echo $M_FINISH
fi

The section in particular that confuses me is this one:

      if [ -e hcm.ear ]
      then
        cp -v hcm.ear $DEPLOY_PATH/hcm.ear
        HCM_DEPLOYED=true
      else
        if [ -e hcm.war ]
        then
          cp -v hcm.war $DEPLOY_PATH/hcm.war
          HCM_DEPLOY开发者_Python百科ED=true
        else 
          echo $M_MISSING_HCM
        fi
      fi

I can't seem to get elif [ -e hcm.war ] to work correctly on the remote server. The remote server is running bash 3.2.25 on redhat (if that makes any difference.) I suspect I'm just missing some picky bash shell script detail.

Any suggestions?

Your code as posted seems to work.

There is a difference between elif .. fi AND else ; if ... fi. A true elif ... fi will have one fewer fi at the end than your code.

Your code as posted, asks, "if hcm.ear exists THEN check if there is an hcm.war". Is that what you want? The other logic path to test would be "if hcm.ear doesn't exist THEN check if there an hcm.war."

That alternate logic path looks like

  if [ -e hcm.ear ] ; then
    cp -v hcm.ear $DEPLOY_PATH/hcm.ear
    HCM_DEPLOYED=true
  elif [ -e hcm.war ] ; then
      cp -v hcm.war $DEPLOY_PATH/hcm.war
      HCM_DEPLOYED=true
  else 
    echo $M_MISSING_HCM
  fi

I hope this helps.

This isn't a direct answer to the question (elif vs else) but I would refactor like so:

HCM_DEPLOYED=true
cp -v hcm.ear "${DEPLOY_PATH}/" || cp -v hcm.war "${DEPLOY_PATH}/" || HCM_DEPLOYED=false
if [ ! ${HCM_DEPLOYED} ]; then
   echo "${M_MISSING_HCM}"
else
    # TODO: detect the hostname
    ...

I.e. always try the copies since you always want to do them, if one fails try the next, etc.

As an aside, you always want to wrap paths and strings in quotes. Otherwise a path containing spaces will cause your app to break.