Re: exec | wc isn't very useful...

[Anthony Heading <aheading@jpmorgan.com>]

On Wed, Dec 15, 2004 at 07:18:00PM +0000, Peter Stephenson wrote:
> >     exec | wc
> 
> The syntax doesn't make sense.  You're piping the output of "exec" on
> its own, which doesn't do anything, to "wc". 

Yes... doesn't that just mean that it's free to be assigned any
meaning that an implementer might care to give it?

> Try this:
> exec > >(wc)
> Something like this got broken at one point (by me) but is working in
> the latest version of the shell.

Ah.  Perfect.  I'm sure tried that before and it didn't work -
perhaps I hit the period when it was broken...

> A pipeline is fundamentally different from a redirection.

I don't quite see that - aside from the very real underlying
implementation issues, what is wrong with a conceptual model
that views:
    a | b | c
as pure syntactic sugar for:
    a > >(b > >(c))
?

Would it not be appealing to _define_
    exec | wc
to mean:
    exec > >(wc)

given that it doesn't currently mean anything at all?

Regardless, appreciate your help with identifying a working
syntax...

Rgds

Anthony

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