What I seem to remember is that it was a trick used in BSD to achieve compatibility with SystemV shell scripts (the shell on System-V would understand [ .. ] but the one on BSD wouldn't and making [ a symlink to test would fix the problem). My copy of Portable C and UNIX system programming only mentions that the [ .. ] construct may be missing on some shell versions and this can usually be fixed by symlinking [ to test. A hardlink from /bin/[ to /bin/test was present on Ultrix since at least 3.1, which would also attest to the BSDism or workaround for non-System-V systems. Sorry, this is too far back in time for my feeble memory. j On Wed, 5 Dec 2007 11:20:38 +1100 "Christopher Vance" wrote: > On Dec 5, 2007 10:25 AM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: > > FreeBSD and NetBSD still have this link: > > > > $ ls -li /bin/[ /bin/test > > 683091 -r-xr-xr-x 2 root wheel 7460 Aug 19 2006 /bin/[ > > 683091 -r-xr-xr-x 2 root wheel 7460 Aug 19 2006 /bin/test > > > > I suppose OpenBSD does too, but I don't have a machine to check. > > Still there as of the latest release. > > -- > Christopher Vance > _______________________________________________ > TUHS mailing list > TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org > https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs -- These opinions are mine and only mine. Hey man, I saw them first! José R. Valverde De nada sirve la Inteligencia Artificial cuando falta la Natural -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: not available URL: