Re: Unix File Descriptors In Bash

On 22/09/10 20:10, pk wrote:
[...]
iii) What does |& do (they state it is equivalent to 2>&, but I do not
know what this does).

This is present in bash 4, and basically doing

somecommand |& grep foo

is the same as doing

somecommand 2>&1 | grep foo

What that does is to redirect stdout and stderr to the same place. So you
are basically sending both stdout and stderr down the pipe in both cases.

There is an equivalent operator to do the same for files, so

somecommand &> file

is the same as

somecommand >file 2>&1

The operator can have two forms: &> and >&, of which the manual says the
first one is preferred (I would have thought the second one is preferred, to
make it consistent with |&, but no).

This is what I thought as well when I read the respective line of your
posting. Isn't there any rationale provided with that recommendation?

Janis
.

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