Re: Do `>& -` and `<& -` also work?

[Chet Ramey]

On 5/10/21 1:56 PM, Peng Yu wrote:

> The manual text that you quoted does not mention that there can be
> spaces after `&` in `[n]>&word`. So I wouldn't consider that this is
> clearly stated in the manual. As it is written, it doesn't seem to be
> by design. It looks more like it is a consequence of the
> implementation, which makes it just happens like that.

This is not correct.

> I would think lexer return `[n]>&-` as a whole may make more sense.
> Since `>&` has the meaning of dump stdout/err to a file, that file
> could be named as "-".

That would not help anything.

> The current lexer returns ">&" and "-" separately, making people have
> to write `>& ./-` in order to write both stdout/err to a file named
> `-`. This seems to be a worse syntax overall than treating `>&-` as a
> whole, then `>& -` can just mean write stdout/err to the file "-".

Except it would be wrong, incompatible with other shells, and not POSIX
conformant.

--
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
                 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU    chet@case.edu    http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/