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From: Nadav Har'El <nyh@math.technion.ac.il>
To: sergio <mailbox@sergio.spb.ru>
Cc: zsh-users@zsh.org
Subject: Re: [[ and [
Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2012 10:12:11 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20120307081211.GB15125@fermat.math.technion.ac.il> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <4F55EF85.3050809@sergio.spb.ru>

On Tue, Mar 06, 2012, sergio wrote about "Re: [[ and [":
> On 03/06/2012 10:05 AM, Bart Schaefer wrote:
> 
> What was the reason to implement [[ ]]? What advantages it gives? As
> I see [[ ]] and [ ] provides same features.

In the original Unix, "[" was not a shell builtin - it was a normal
program, /bin/[, normally a hard link to /bin/test. As such, you needed
to follow ordinary (and annoying) quoting rules for its parameters.

When ksh (and later zsh and bash) implemented '[' as a builtin, it
retained its exact old behavior for backward compatibility, this should NOT
and instead invented a new syntax, the [[, for an improved version, with
less need for quoting and new tests, including for example the "<" operator
for text dictionary-order (on why this deals with text and not numbers,
see my separate reply).


-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |                  Wednesday, Mar 7 2012, 
nyh@math.technion.ac.il             |-----------------------------------------
Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |Linux: Because a PC is a terrible thing
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |to waste.


  parent reply	other threads:[~2012-03-07  8:22 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 22+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2012-03-04  2:36 sergio
2012-03-04  4:24 ` Bart Schaefer
2012-03-06  0:32   ` sergio
2012-03-06  6:05     ` Bart Schaefer
2012-03-06 11:05       ` sergio
2012-03-06 11:35         ` Peter Stephenson
2012-03-06 11:44           ` Peter Stephenson
2012-03-06 11:53             ` Mikael Magnusson
2012-03-07  9:02               ` Nadav Har'El
2012-03-07  9:05                 ` Mikael Magnusson
2012-03-07  9:21                   ` Nadav Har'El
2012-03-07 15:27                     ` Bart Schaefer
2012-03-07  8:52             ` Nadav Har'El
2012-03-07  9:43               ` Peter Stephenson
2012-03-07 14:11                 ` Nadav Har'El
2012-03-07 14:27                   ` Peter Stephenson
2012-03-07 18:38                   ` Mark
2012-03-06 16:16           ` sergio
2012-03-06 16:29             ` Peter Stephenson
2012-03-06 17:40               ` sergio
2012-03-07  8:12         ` Nadav Har'El [this message]
2012-03-04  4:50 ` Kurtis Rader

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