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LABBEGINNER

Conditionals and Control Flow Lab

Build intelligent scripts with conditional logic - validation, decision-making, and automated alerts based on system state.

300 minutes
platform-engineering/automation
Conditionals and Control Flow Lab - Platform Engineering Hands-On Lab Icon

Lab Overview

In this hands-on lab, you'll master bash conditional logic by building a comprehensive system health check script. You'll learn if/else/elif statements, test conditions, comparison operators, and case statements for menu-driven scripts.

You'll implement input validation, check file existence, compare values, validate user permissions, and create automated alerting based on system conditions. These patterns are fundamental to writing robust automation scripts.

By the end of this lab, you'll understand:

  • if/else/elif conditional structures
  • test command and [ ] syntax
  • Comparison operators (eq, ne, lt, gt, le, ge)
  • String comparisons (=, !=, -z, -n)
  • File test operators (-f, -d, -e, -r, -w, -x)
  • Logical operators (&&, ||, !)
  • case statements for pattern matching
  • Input validation patterns
  • Error handling with conditionals

What You'll Learn

Write if/else/elif conditional structures for decision-making in bash scripts

Use file test operators (-f, -d, -r, -w, -x) to validate environments before running automation

Implement numeric comparison operators for threshold monitoring and alerting

Create case statements for menu-driven and pattern-matched script logic

Build input validation patterns that prevent errors in platform automation scripts

Prerequisites

bash script fundamentals (Week 5 Lab 1)

linux command line proficiency

understanding of exit codes

Technologies Covered

bashscriptingconditionalsautomationerror-handling

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