That still doesn't make it look nice, since if you use false / true, you can use variables directly in if checks. For example: foo=true if $foo; then

That still doesn't make it look nice, since if you use false / true, you can use variables directly in if checks. For example: foo=true if $foo; then echo yes fi But with 0 / 1 - that won't work. I.e. you can get some, but not all features of a normal boolean type in various ways.