5 Jan
2020
5 Jan
'20
4:33 a.m.
On 1/4/20 5:19 PM, Terry Jones wrote:
Was : actually designed for commenting? If so, at
what point did it become
a command that always returns zero exit status? Was it always built-in, or
did it originally have a separate filesystem existence (like "[")? Python
has a useful "pass" command, but : is much nicer because you can
"comment"
out a single command in (e.g.) an if/then and it remains syntactically
valid and executable. I find it very elegant.
It's elegant until you forget that `:' continues to process redirections.
--
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU chet(a)case.edu http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/