What are Double Parentheses in Bash

Brackets are important in any programming language to execute the program and get the desired outputs. In bash, we use single and double parentheses to perform different tasks through a script. However, many beginners and even intermediate bash users need to learn about double parentheses. So in this tutorial, we will briefly summarize what double parentheses are in bash.

What are Double Parentheses in Bash

The “((..))” double parentheses are similar to the let command, which you can use to perform arithmetic calculations in a script. For example, let’s create a script that will perform various arithmetic calculations:

Once you run the above script, the terminal will ask you to enter two numbers, and then it will perform the calculations:

Similarly, you can use the following patterns of double parentheses styles to get the required results:

This script provides the same result as the previous one:

You can also use the [[ rather than [  because it is an advanced type that offers a ton of enhancements such as:

• • The [[ can efficiently handle the empty strings and some strings with the whitespace.
  • You can use || and && logical operators with [[ but not [ because single [ can’t pass || and && operator as a command-line argument.

Wrapping Up

This was all about the double parentheses in bash, which you can try to enhance the arithmetic calculations easily. We have explained various types of examples to perform arithmetic calculations by adding double parentheses. Bash contains a ton of concepts that you can learn to become a bash expert. So make sure you check out Linuxhint to read various tutorials of bash.