On 09:55 18 Aug 2002, Bruce M Beach <brucemartinbeach_at_21cn.com> wrote:
| On Sun, 18 Aug 2002, Mikhael Goikhman wrote:
| > Funny, the following is incorrect in bash and ksh:
| > % xterm &; xterm
| Yeah. I've seen the above "% xterm &; xterm" fail a million
| times and never learn because it doesn't make any sense to
| me. I think its a bug. Heres a line from a script where I use
| the semi-colon which works just fine:
| cd /usr/src; rm -rf $GCC; tar -zxvf $GCC.tar.gz;
| I guess the & confuses it.
No, the semicolon confuses it. Try this:
; echo foo
Works in zsh. Fails in bash:
[cameron_at_amadeus cameron]$ ; echo foo
bash: syntax error near unexpected token `;'
Their language syntax just doesn't cope with a semicolon at the start of a
command. Which is sad.
All Bourne shells (bash, zsh etc) should cope with this:
xterm & xterm & xterm &
because & terminates a command, so you need no separator before the next
xterm. Works in csh too.
For your amusement, bash doesn't cope with this either:
< foo ( command )
which _ought_ to be the same as this:
( command ) < foo
because redirections are supposed to be permitted anywhere.
Cheers,
--
Cameron Simpson, DoD#743 cs_at_zip.com.au http://www.zip.com.au/~cs/
The CBR and ZXR should come with a warning sticker that says 'You are not
Mick Doohan, do NOT be a prat' - UK's _BIKE_ magazine
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Received on Sun Aug 18 2002 - 00:26:24 BST