One line if/else condition in linux shell scripting

I would like to have the equivelant of the following in a one line if/else condition.

$maxline=`cat journald.conf | grep "#SystemMaxUse="`
if [ $maxline == "#SystemMaxUse=" ]
then
    sed 's/\#SystemMaxUse=/SystemMaxUse=50M/g' journald.conf > journald.conf2
    mv journald.conf2 journald.conf;
else
    echo "This file has been edited. You'll need to do it manually."
fi  

I'm attempting to put this into a one line command. So far I've gotten it all but the else portion of the command. Here's what I have so far...

maxline=`cat journald.conf | grep "#SystemMaxUse="` && if [ $maxline == "#SystemMaxUse=" ]; then sed 's/\#SystemMaxUse=/SystemMaxUse=50M/g' journald.conf > journald.conf2 && mv journald.conf2 journald.conf; fi

So how can I include the else portion of the above code into my command? Thank you for your help in advance.

It looks as if you were on the right track. You just need to add the else statement after the ";" following the "then" statement. Also I would split the first line from the second line with a semicolon instead of joining it with "&&".

maxline='cat journald.conf | grep "#SystemMaxUse="'; if [ $maxline == "#SystemMaxUse=" ]; then sed 's/\#SystemMaxUse=/SystemMaxUse=50M/g' journald.conf > journald.conf2 && mv journald.conf2 journald.conf; else echo "This file has been edited. You'll need to do it manually."; fi

Also in your original script, when declaring maxline you used back-ticks "`" instead of single quotes "'" which might cause problems.

To summarize the other answers, for general use:

Multi-line if...then statement

if [ foo ]; then
	a; b
elif [ bar ]; then
	c; d
else
	e; f
fi

Single-line version

if [ foo ]; then a && b; elif [ bar ]; c && d; else e && f; fi

Using the OR operator

( foo && a && b ) || ( bar && c && d ) || e && f;

Notes

Remember that the AND and OR operators evaluate whether or not the result code of the previous operation was equal to true/success (0). So if a custom function returns something else (or nothing at all), you may run into problems with the AND/OR shorthand. In such cases, you may want to replace something like ( a && b ) with ( [ a == 'EXPECTEDRESULT' ] && b ), etc.

Also note that ( and [ are technically commands, so whitespace is required around them.

Instead of a group of && statements like then a && b; else, you could also run statements in a subshell like then $( a; b ); else, though this is less efficient. The same is true for doing something like result1=$( foo; a; b ); result2=$( bar; c; d ); [ "$result1" -o "$result2" ] instead of ( foo && a && b ) || ( bar && c && d ). Though at that point you'd be getting more into less-compact, multi-line stuff anyway.

It's not a direct answer to the question but you could just use the OR-operator

( grep "#SystemMaxUse=" journald.conf > /dev/null && sed -i 's/\#SystemMaxUse=/SystemMaxUse=50M/g' journald.conf ) || echo "This file has been edited. You'll need to do it manually."

You can use like bellow:

(( var0 = var1<98?9:21 ))

the same as

if [ "$var1" -lt 98 ]; then
   var0=9
else
   var0=21
fi

extends

condition?result-if-true:result-if-false

I found the interested thing on the book "Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide"