Bash – Check If Two Strings are Equal

Brief: This example will help you to understand to check if two strings are equal in a bash script. This shell script accepts two string in variables and checks if they are identical.

Details

Use == operator with bash if statement to check if two strings are equal.
You can also use != to check if two string are not equal.
You must use single space before and after the == and != operators.

Example

In this script two variables are initialized with predefined strings. Now check if both strings are equal or not with == operator.

#!/bin/bash

str1="Hello Bash"
str2="Hello Bash"

if [ "$str1" == "$str2" ]; then
    echo "Strings are equal"
else
    echo "Strings are not equal"
fi

#!/bin/bash

str1="Hello Bash"

str2="Hello Bash"

if [ "$str1" == "$str2" ]; then

echo "Strings are equal"

else

echo "Strings are not equal"

Output:

Strings are equal

Another Example

Use below sample shell script to take input from the user and check if given strings are equal or not.

#!/bin/bash

read -p "Enter first string: " str1
read -p "Enter second string: " str2

if [ "$str1" == "$str2" ]; then
    echo "Strings are equal"
else
    echo "Strings are not equal"
fi

#!/bin/bash

read -p "Enter first string: " str1

read -p "Enter second string: " str2

if [ "$str1" == "$str2" ]; then

echo "Strings are equal"

else

echo "Strings are not equal"

Script execution results:

First Run:
StEnter first string: welcome bash
Enter second string: welcome bash
Strings are equal

Second Run:
Enter first string: Welcome bash
Enter second string: hello bash
Strings are not equal

bash, operators, shell, string