Re: Do `>& -` and `<& -` also work?

[Chet Ramey]

On 5/10/21 2:44 PM, Andreas Kusalananda Kähäri wrote:

> Did you try your ">& ./-"?  I get
>
>         $ echo hello >& ./-
>         bash: ./: ambiguous redirect

This is an error because bash translates this into >&DIGIT- (which moves
file descriptors). The syntax is more general than it might seem, because
DIGIT can actually be a WORD that expands to a number. This is consistent
with the other redirection operators that take a WORD and bash's support
for multi-digit file descriptors. When it doesn't expand to a number, it's
a redirection error.

Chet
--
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
                 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU    chet@case.edu    http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/