Multilevel if-then-else

if..elif..else..fi allows the script to have various possibilities and conditions. This is handy, when you want to compare one variable to a different values.

           if condition
           then
                       condition is true
                       execute all commands up to elif statement
           elif condition1 
           then
                       condition1 is true
                       execute all commands up to elif statement  
           elif condition2
           then
                       condition2 is true
                       execute all commands up to elif statement          
           elif conditionN
           then
                       conditionN is true
                       execute all commands up to else statement          
           else
                       None of the above conditions are true
                       execute all commands up to fi
           fi

In if..elif..else..fi structure, the block of the first true condition is executed. If no condition is true, the else block, is executed.

Example

A simple shell script to determine if the given number is a negative or a positive number (numest.sh):

#!/bin/bash
read -p "Enter a number : " n
if [ $n -gt 0 ]; then
  echo "$n is a positive."
elif [ $n -lt 0 ]
then
  echo "$n is a negative."
elif [ $n -eq 0 ]
then
  echo "$n is zero number."
else
  echo "Oops! $n is not a number."
fi

Save and close the file. Run it as follows:

chmod +x numest.sh
./numest.sh