Re: Error pushing new branch: value too great for base (error token is...

From: Eric Sunshine <sunshine@sunshineco.com>
Date: Aug 10, 2015, 22:47 UTC
Message-ID: <CAPig+cTB0VU6rmLT1H7sPMNBPE0zKvWmMp_obS5VpZBAi2nYLA@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CA+P7+xpKHw8xkpMSjCftmAnMh=J_R9HxhYD48O2-P2WKUH1diw@mail.gmail.com>

On Mon, Aug 10, 2015 at 6:29 PM, Jacob Keller <jacob.keller@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 10 quoted lines

> On Mon, Aug 10, 2015 at 2:54 AM, Gaurav Chhabra
> <varuag.chhabra@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Apologies for the delay in reply! I tried your suggestion and it
>> works. Thanks! :)
>>
>> I'm curious why integer comparison is throwing error. Shouldn't i be
>> comparing numbers with numeric operator?
>
> Yes, but shell doesn't treat hex numbers as numbers. So it will work
> only if the string is a decimal number.

This particular case deserves a bit more explanation. The expression in question was this:

    if [[ "$new_sha" -eq "$NULL" ]]; then

where 'new_sha' was 9226289d2416af4cb7365d7aaa5e382bdb3d9a89.

In Bash, inside the [[ .. ]], it did attempt evaluating the SHA1 as a *decimal* number, however, when it encountered the "d", it complained that it was outside the allowed range of decimal digits ("0"..."9"). Had the SHA1 been prefixed by a "0x", the [[...]] context would have dealt with it just fine.

Outside the [[...]] context, arguments to -eq do need to be base-10 integers.

Nevertheless, a SHA1 is effective an opaque value. There's little, if anything, to be gained by treating it as a numeric quantity, hence string '=' makes more sense than numeric '-eq'.