[Gnu-arch-users] bash scripting conditionals: "-a" vs "-e"

[Zenaan Harkness]

Is -a historical - or why is it there?

I converted a bunch of -f to -a in my build scripts, because I realised
I didn't want to distinguish between sylinks and 'regular' files.

Then I discovered that this broke when inside the construction
"[ ! -a file ]" since the -a becomes like &&.

So I went reading again and found out that -e appears the same as -a,
and -a is like &&.

So why -a at all?

tia
zen