您应该记住，shell脚本不是一种语言，而是一组命令。你本能地认为这种“语言”要求你在if后面加一个[或一个[[。这两个命令都只是返回一个表示成功或失败的退出状态的命令（就像其他所有命令一样）。出于这个原因，我会使用grep，而不是[命令。

只要做到：

if grep -q foo <<<"$string"; then
    echo "It's there"
fi

既然您正在考虑如果测试它后面的命令的退出状态（用分号完成），为什么不重新考虑您正在测试的字符串的源代码？

## Instead of this
filetype="$(file -b "$1")"
if grep -q "tar archive" <<<"$filetype"; then
#...

## Simply do this
if file -b "$1" | grep -q "tar archive"; then
#...

-q选项使grep不输出任何内容，因为我们只需要返回代码使shell展开下一个单词，并将其用作命令的输入，这是<<here文档的一行版本（我不确定这是标准还是巴什主义）。

通用的大海捞针示例下面是变量

#!/bin/bash

needle="a_needle"
haystack="a_needle another_needle a_third_needle"
if [[ $haystack == *"$needle"* ]]; then
    echo "needle found"
else
    echo "needle NOT found"
fi

一个是：

[ $(expr $mystring : ".*${search}.*") -ne 0 ] && echo 'yes' ||  echo 'no'

我使用这个函数（一个不包括但很明显的依赖项）。它通过了以下测试。如果函数返回值>0，则找到字符串。你也可以很容易地返回1或0。

function str_instr {
   # Return position of ```str``` within ```string```.
   # >>> str_instr "str" "string"
   # str: String to search for.
   # string: String to search.
   typeset str string x
   # Behavior here is not the same in bash vs ksh unless we escape special characters.
   str="$(str_escape_special_characters "${1}")"
   string="${2}"
   x="${string%%$str*}"
   if [[ "${x}" != "${string}" ]]; then
      echo "${#x} + 1" | bc -l
   else
      echo 0
   fi
}

function test_str_instr {
   str_instr "(" "'foo@host (dev,web)'" | assert_eq 11
   str_instr ")" "'foo@host (dev,web)'" | assert_eq 19
   str_instr "[" "'foo@host [dev,web]'" | assert_eq 11
   str_instr "]" "'foo@host [dev,web]'" | assert_eq 19
   str_instr "a" "abc" | assert_eq 1
   str_instr "z" "abc" | assert_eq 0
   str_instr "Eggs" "Green Eggs And Ham" | assert_eq 7
   str_instr "a" "" | assert_eq 0
   str_instr "" "" | assert_eq 0
   str_instr " " "Green Eggs" | assert_eq 6
   str_instr " " " Green "  | assert_eq 1
}

[[ $string == *foo* ]] && echo "It's there" || echo "Couldn't find"

这里回答的问题的扩展如何判断POSIX sh中的字符串是否包含另一个字符串？：

此解决方案适用于特殊字符：

# contains(string, substring)
#
# Returns 0 if the specified string contains the specified substring,
# otherwise returns 1.
contains() {
    string="$1"
    substring="$2"

    if echo "$string" | $(type -p ggrep grep | head -1) -F -- "$substring" >/dev/null; then
        return 0    # $substring is in $string
    else
        return 1    # $substring is not in $string
    fi
}

contains "abcd" "e" || echo "abcd does not contain e"
contains "abcd" "ab" && echo "abcd contains ab"
contains "abcd" "bc" && echo "abcd contains bc"
contains "abcd" "cd" && echo "abcd contains cd"
contains "abcd" "abcd" && echo "abcd contains abcd"
contains "" "" && echo "empty string contains empty string"
contains "a" "" && echo "a contains empty string"
contains "" "a" || echo "empty string does not contain a"
contains "abcd efgh" "cd ef" && echo "abcd efgh contains cd ef"
contains "abcd efgh" " " && echo "abcd efgh contains a space"

contains "abcd [efg] hij" "[efg]" && echo "abcd [efg] hij contains [efg]"
contains "abcd [efg] hij" "[effg]" || echo "abcd [efg] hij does not contain [effg]"

contains "abcd *efg* hij" "*efg*" && echo "abcd *efg* hij contains *efg*"
contains "abcd *efg* hij" "d *efg* h" && echo "abcd *efg* hij contains d *efg* h"
contains "abcd *efg* hij" "*effg*" || echo "abcd *efg* hij does not contain *effg*"