Re: /usr/bin/[ ?
On Tue, 2002-03-05 at 11:32, Stephen Gran wrote:
> Hello all,
> I've just set up a laptop with Woody, going lovely, thanks to all of
> you. I noticed while writing a shell script that searches some of my
> $PATH that I have a file /usr/bin/[ - is this normal? I don't remeber
> seeing it on any of my other boxen, although I don't have access to
> them right now to check. Looking at it, it's a binary file, so I
> don't think it's an artifact of a poorly written shell script I wrote
> (and I haven't done much else on this box). I'm heavily firewalled,
> so I don't really think I've been hacked, it's just kind of odd. I
> look forward to your answers.
> Thanks,
> Steve
>
Steve:
No, you haven't been cracked. Or at least, this is not evidence for it.
"[" is a synonym for the program "test". On my system, it's a symbolic
link to /usr/bin/test. It's there so you can do things in shell scripts
like:
if [ -x /etc/rc.d/init.d/apm ]
instead of
if test -x /etc/rc.d/init.d/apm
See "man test."
If you use the "[" form, you have to supply a trailing bracket.
IHTH.
Tony
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