There seems to have been a migration over time from the first format to the second, perhaps a result of C programmers not having a keyword "then", which Bourne shells (following Algol 68) require. I don't think it matters much. On Tue, Sep 29, 2020 at 2:52 PM David Barto wrote: > In a brief discussion with a coworker today the question of formatting > shell scripts came up. > > I believed that in the past the preferred format (if there ever were any > such thing) was > > if [ test ] > then > statements > else > statements > fi > > I can find nothing specific to back this up. More appropriate for COFF > maybe would > be a discussion of what format is better > > if [ test ]; then > statements > else > statements > fi > > or the above. > > No intention to start any kind of flame war about which is better, just > want to see > if there is any historical option for one over the other. > > David