In sh, is '[' a portable synonym

Guy Harris guy at sun.uucp
Sun Oct 27 10:35:25 AEST 1985


> '/bin/test' is a *program* and '[]' is intrepreted by the shell in all
> Sys III (and greater) Bourne shells.

Yes, but "test" (as opposed to "/bin/test") is interpreted by the shell in
all Sys III (and greater) Bourne shells!  Yes, this means

	1) you can't run a program in your current directory named "test" by
	   typing "test" - you have to type "./test"

and

	2) even if "/bin" is the first directory in your PATH containing
	   a program called "test", "/bin/test" and "test" do different
	   things.

This may seem strange, but since it's true its strangeness is irrelevant to
the discussion.

	Guy Harris



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