shell parsing bug with &>

[Harald Becker]

Hi Rich !

On 07-09-2012 00:13 Rich Felker <dalias at aerifal.cx> wrote:

>">file" is valid by itself as a command; it truncates file to 0 bytes,
>creating it if it does not exist. It's even more useful with noclobber
>mode, e.g.
>
>set -C;bg_command&>lockfile||exit 1

I don't want to jump into the discussion (due to lack of time), so just
some question to satisfy my interesst:

What magic thing are you trying to do here?

set -C;>lockfile||exit 1

looks ok ... create lockfile or abort if not possible

... why throwing in that background command at this place?

... why not generally adding a space after &? It's so easy to fix the
script with a single sed call, if it does not contain tons of ugly
constructs (like strings containing "&>").

Sorry if it sound provocative, I'm just interested/wondering what/why
are you doing here. Nothing more.

--
Harald