Why was my answer deleted?

Question

I wrote the following answer:

Contrary to what the moderator wrote, without any intention of critiquing or requesting clarification, I wrote that answer because -bash: syntax error near unexpected token `;' was marked as a duplicate of that question. And none of the answers in the dup or the original question provided an answer for my situation. My answer provided a different solution for that error

I've been using stackoverflow.com for about 5 years now, and I've never had my question deleted like this. Worst case scenario is that the answer was left there to be downvoted. This was too quick and too harsh.

Answer 1

It appears to me as if your specific issue was quite different from the issue in the question.

Both the code and the error message in the question is different from what you had, so I'm not quite sure how your answer is relevant to the question as it doesn't actually provide a solution to it. Note that similar error messages can have very different causes.

The question at hand contained a number of errors, which is probably why it wasn't closed as "off topic (typo)". There was a bit more explanation needed to resolve it than just saying "you forgot to insert a semi colon".

In contrast, your answer did not address the code given in the question at all.

The duplicate, "-bash: syntax error near unexpected token `;'", is a duplicate, not because of the error message (which is different), but on account of doing the exact same things wrong. These are

1. No space immediately inside [ and ].
2. No semi colon before then or before fi.

Your issue, on the other hand, would be a duplicate of the question "Why isn't a semicolon accepted after then?", not of the question that you answered, since the cause of your error is putting a semi colon after then (a shell keyword).