On Thu, Apr 19, 2001 at 04:33:00PM -0400, Bob Glover wrote:
> I'm fairly certain that ] is not tied exclusively to the test
> operators. The [ "operator" is actually just the name of a command.
> Try this:
>
> ls -l /usr/bin/[
>
> The [ command (AKA test) expects it's last argument to be the ]
> character, that's all.
>
> - Bob Glover
There is indeed an external command [ that eats a ].
However, it is also a shell builtin, at least in contemporary shells.
"help" is a bash command that shows info about builtin commands.
seki-strombrg> help [
[: [ arg... ]
This is a synonym for the "test" builtin, but the last
argument must be a literal `]', to match the opening `['.
--
Dan Stromberg UCI/NACS/DCS
PGP signature
