Re: Take that, Microsoft!

On Fri, 24 May 2024 17:35:09 -0000 (UTC), candycanearter07 wrote:

Chris Ahlstrom <OFeem1987@teleworm.us> wrote at 12:39 this Friday (GMT):

But both can be used by other shells.  The files /usr/bin/test and
/usr/bin/[ are different sizes, but doing "man \[" brings up test(1).

 
Good to know, I suppose.
 

That made me curious enough to dig. On MacOS, /bin/[ and /bin/test are
hardlinked together.

"dpkg-query" says that both [ and test are provided by coreutils, but
coreutils has a src/test.c, and src/lbracket.c for the other program.
src/lbracket.c is very simple:

  #define LBRACKET 1 #include "test.c"

The reason for the difference seems to be that GNU wanted to have --help
and --version options, but POSIX only allows [ to print anything in
response to those options, while "test" has to exit silently.

MacOS also handles these arguments differently depending on if it's
/bin/[ or /bin/test, with [ printing an error message (and no help)
instead of returning silently.