Date: Mon, 02 Sep 1996 16:08:24 -0700 From: "David E. Tweten" <tweten@frihet.com> To: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> Cc: jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard), joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de, freebsd-current@FreeBSD.org, bde@zeta.org.au Subject: Re: Anyone mind if I remove the following braindamage from test(1)? Message-ID: <199609022308.QAA10870@ns.frihet.com>
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Initially quoting someone else, terry@lambert.org said:
>> I'd expect that to hold true only if the argument was not a flag
>>argument which required a parameter, then I'd expect it to puke.
>I agree; a flag isn't an argument, it's a flag.
Ah, but POSIX test doesn't have flags. It has "operators" ("=", "!=",
"-gt", and the like) and "elements of primaries". A primary is something
like "-d file" (my quotes), which in this case contains two "elements".
POSIX goes on to say that "string" (my quotes) is a primary that is true if
the string is non-null. And, "All operators and elements of primaries
shall be presented as separate arguments to the test utility."
As has previously been quoted in this thread, it continues by saying that
test with a single "argument" returns true (0) if that argument is
non-null, and returns false (1) otherwise, obviously treating it as the
"string" primary.
So I guess under POSIX test, everything is an argument and
[ -d ]
is in fact a test to see of "-d" is the null string.
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