Conditionals and Control Flow Lab

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