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Date:      Sun, 12 Nov 2000 17:30:30 -0800
From:      Kent Stewart <kstewart@urx.com>
To:        Tommy Forrest - KE4PYM <tforrest@mcs.net>
Cc:        "freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG" <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: What is "["?
Message-ID:  <3A0F4436.9F691215@urx.com>
References:  <200011130004.SAA06022@mailbox.mcs.net>

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Tommy Forrest - KE4PYM wrote:
> 
> Rooting around (no pun intended) my 4.0 system today I happened upon
> a file called "[" in /bin.  Not knowing what this file was I deleted
> it.
> 
> Rule number one:  Dont delete that in which you do not know.  Rename
> it.

My rule number one is much less forgiving. If you don't know what it
is, don't touch it at all.

> 
> Lesson learned.  Soon after my network died.  I rebooted the system.
> Lots of bad things (tm) happened.  Nothing would start up.  So I
> logged in and did a man [ and found it was a test utility.  Then I
> did a locate test |more  Found /bin/test.  Copied test to [ and
> rebooted.  Everything is happy.
> 
> What, exactly, is "[".  Why is it on my system as "["?

ruby# ll test
-r-xr-xr-x  2 root  wheel  51112 Nov 10 16:51 test
ruby# ll [
-r-xr-xr-x  2 root  wheel  51112 Nov 10 16:51 [

You have been sent a reference to "man [" so that you can see how it
is used. What I haven't seen is someone showing you that it is the
same file with two names.

Kent

-- 
Kent Stewart
Richland, WA

mailto:kbstew99@hotmail.com
http://kstewart.urx.com/kstewart/index.html
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