James H. H. Lampert:
Could it be that |cron| is running it an entirely different shell,
that doesn't understand the |if| statement?
Despite what others have said, the answer to this question is no.
Whilst you /are/ running two different shells, the problem is not the
|if| statement. Both of those shells understand that |if| statement.
The difference between the shells involves the fact that you have
assumed a particular exit status for the |cd| command for non-existent
directories. That's the exit status that the |cd| command results in,
in one of your shells. But it is not the exit status that results in
the other.
Ironically, you are using the |[| command /anyway/, and that command has
a direct method, its |-d| operator, for testing for the non-existence of
a directory. So you are going around the houses a bit in order to
achieve what you could be achieving directly, and portably (without
assumptions about exit statuses), with the |[| command itself.
