How can I compare a variable to a text string, rather than integer, in an if/else statement?

In the process of writing a shell script, I ran into an issue with the following if/else statement that falls somewhere in the middle of the script:

if [ $act -eq "add" ] then read - "add or update: " $comm git commit -m "$comm $file" else git commit -m "$act $file" fi 

The returning error being:

./gitup: line 13: [: add: integer expression expected 

and then proceeds with the rest of the script. How can I have the if segment evaluate/compare the variable to a string input rather than an integer; a different error was required when using "!=" among a couple of other things I tried.

2 Answers

Something like this:

act="add" if [[ $act = "add" ]] then echo good else echo not good fi 

-eq is for number comparison, use = for string comparison

This method would also work. Very similar to @Guru's answer but removes the need for double square brackets.

if [ "$act" == "add" ] then echo "Good!" else echo "Not good!" fi