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Date:      Mon, 2 Sep 1996 08:31:48 +0200 (MET DST)
From:      J Wunsch <j@uriah.heep.sax.de>
To:        freebsd-current@FreeBSD.org (FreeBSD-current users)
Cc:        bde@zeta.org.au (Bruce Evans), jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard)
Subject:   Re: Anyone mind if I remove the following braindamage from test(1)?
Message-ID:  <199609020631.IAA22016@uriah.heep.sax.de>
In-Reply-To: <13843.841630272@time.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at "Sep 1, 96 07:11:12 pm"

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As Jordan K. Hubbard wrote:

> root@time-> [ -d /tmp ] && echo Yup, its a directory
> Yup, its a directory
> root@time-> [ -d ] && echo Yup, its a directory
> Yup, its a directory

No:

j@uriah 651% [ -d ] && echo Yup, -d aint empty.
Yup, -d aint empty.

That's apparently the reasoning behind.

>   Is there any POSIX weirdness which
> mandates that test not do proper argument checking?

 The algorithm for determining the precedence of the operators and the      1
 return value that shall be generated is based on the number of arguments   1
 presented to test.  (However, when using the [...] form, the right-        1
 bracket final argument shall not be counted in this algorithm.)  In the    1
 following list, $1, $2, $3, and $4 represent the arguments presented to    1
 test.                                                                      1

     0 arguments:                                                           1

          Exit false (1).                                                   1

     1 argument:                                                            1

          Exit true (0) if $1 is not null; otherwise, exit false.           1
...

So unless this has been changed again in the standard (the above is
from a draft), leave it as it is.

-- 
cheers, J"org

joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)



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