Cfrgtkky

I am running some script which passing the string argument and I want to do if else statement shown as below:

if [ $1 != '' ] && [ $2 != '' ]

then 

    do something.....

but it shown Error too many argument. Why?

Try using the -z test:

if [ -z "$1" ] && [ -z "$2" ]

From man bash:

-z string

   True if the length of string is zero.

Since this is tagged bash, I recommend that one use the extended test construct ([[...]]), and forget the quotes:

if [[ -z $1 && -z $2 ]]; then

...

Unless you are going for sh/POSIX compatibility, there is no reason not to use [[ ]].

The following also works,

if [ "$1" == "" && "$2" == ""]; then

    echo NULL

fi

_{For old version of the answer, see second portion of this answer. If you want to know about details, read on}

The cause of issue

In the question itself, it is reported that OP sees too many arguments error, which when tested in bash doesn't seem to be the case:

$ [ $1 != '' ] && [ $2 != '' ]

bash: [: !=: unary operator expected

With /bin/sh which is actually symlinked to /bin/dash on Ubuntu, error reported as follows:

$ sh

$ [ $1 != '' ] && [ $2 != '' ]

sh: 1: [: !=: unexpected operator

And the standalone /bin/test also :

$ /usr/bin/test $1 != ''  

/usr/bin/test: missing argument after ‘’

Sidenote: If you're wondering what is /usr/bin/test and why I'm using bash and sh, then you should know that [ is alias for test command, which also exists as standalone executable or more commonly - as shell built-in which is what each shell will use first. As for if statements, they operate on exit statues of commands, hence why [ and test are commands, with everything else being arguments to that commands - improper order of those command-line args leads to errors.

Back to the topic: it's unclear how OP got the unrelated error. However, in all 3 cases the issue is the same - unset variable will be treated as empty, thus what the shell sees with these unquoted variables is

[ != '' ]

which breaks syntax which test understands. Remember what I said about improper order of command-line arguments ? Hence why quoting is important. Let's enable diagnostic output and see what shell executes:

$ set -x

# throws error

$ [ $1 != '' ] && [ $2 != '' ] 

+ '[' '!=' '' ']'

bash: [: !=: unary operator expected

# no error

$ [ "$1" != '' ] && [ "$2" != '' ] || echo null vars

+ '[' '' '!=' '' ']'

+ echo null vars

null vars

Better way to test unset variables

A very frequent approach that you see around is this:

 if [ "x$var1" == "x"  ] && [ "x$var2" == "x"  ];                                                                

 then

     echo "both variables are null"

 fi

To quote Gilles:

In [ "x$1" = x"" ], the x prefix ensures that x"$1" cannot possibly look like an operator, and so the only way the shell can parse this test is by treating = as a binary operator.

Presumably, this should be fairly portable since I've seen these in /bin/sh scripts. It also can be combined as in

if [ "x${var1}${var2}" == "x" ]; then

    ...

fi

Of course we could use -z flag, however according to research in some shells, particularly ksh88 (according to Stephane Chazelas), this flag is faulty.

See also

• Performance of test command in various shell


• Bash operators [ vs [[ vs ((