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Re: Worth mentioning in documentation


From: Juanma
Subject: Re: Worth mentioning in documentation
Date: Mon, 10 Aug 2015 10:18:52 +0200
User-agent: KMail/4.14.1 (Linux/4.0.0-2-amd64; KDE/4.14.2; x86_64; ; )

El Fri 7 of Aug, Greg Wooledge profirió estas palabras:
> > Those brackets I cited above: ( expression )
> In the US we call those "parentheses", and we reserve the word "brackets"
> (or "square brackets") for [ ].  I realize that the UK uses different
> terminology.  Hence, the word is ambiguous and you should always type
> the actual characters you mean.

Lesson learned.
I didn't mean to enforce UK wording; I just forgot there was a more "natural" 
word for me (as Eduardo noted). 

[...]
> [ is an ordinary command (a "shell builtin")

Here is another point I find confusing: I thought a "shell builtin" didn't have 
a separate binary executable file, like 'cd' (which cd => fail), but some of 
them do have such form (which [ => /usr/bin/[ ; which pwd => /bin/pwd). I also 
fail to see how 'test' modifies the state of the shell itself (like 'cd' does), 
or why it is "impossible or inconvenient to obtain [its functionality] with 
separate utilities".

But that's another story.

> You were reading the section on [[ and assuming that it applies to [.
> That's a huge mistake.
[...]
> Do not use -a or -o.  They might as well not EXIST.  Just forget them.
> You can't use them in [ and you can't use them in test and you can't
> use them in [[.
> 
> Use one of the syntaxes I've shown here.

Huge thanks. It was a good explanation.
-- 
Juanma Menéndez



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