Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!linac!uwm.edu!wuarchive!uunet!ingr!
From: rob@b15.INGR.COM (Rob Lemley)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell
Subject: Re: Question about 'test' (Was Re: testing if a file is present)
Message-ID: <1807@b15.INGR.COM>
Date: 28 Nov 90 20:35:24 GMT
References: <ger.659126250@prisma> <1990Nov21.191638.19469@athena.mit.edu> <90326.175421PPH93@DMSWWU1A.BITNET> <14048@ulysses.att.com>
Distribution: comp.unix
Organization: Intergraph Huntsville
Lines: 11
th: b15!rob

In <14048@ulysses.att.com> ekrell@ulysses.att.com (Eduardo Krell) writes:

>Why should the shell do anything about it? The "]" is an argument to
>"[" (which is a link to test). The shell just passes that token as an
>argument when it exec's test.

Also, the test command looks at argv[0] to see if it was called "test"
or "[".  If "[" then test verifies that the closing "]" argument is there.
If the closing "]" is not there, test exits with a status of 1 (false).

Rob