Stupid bash question

[Les Mikesell]

Joe Smith wrote:
> Tony Nelson wrote:
>  > The reason seems weak to me, but test does not require a closing
>  > square bracket, while [ does, and:
>  > ...
>  >> GNU Coding Standards now declare that the behaviour of binary
>  >> should not depend on its name.
> 
>  From http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/User-Interfaces.html:
>> Please don't make the behavior of a utility depend on the name used to
>> invoke it. It is useful sometimes to make a link to a utility with a
>> different name, and that should not change what it does.
> 
> Sounds more like a request than a declaration ;-)
> 
> I wish they had provided some rationale, seeing as how the practice has 
> a long history on Unix, and I (at least) have not run into any situation 
> where it caused a problem.

And there are good reasons for it.  /bin/[ vs. /bin/test are probably 
extremely rarely used since the shell built-in takes precedence unless 
you specify the path explictly, but cp/ln/mv traditionally were hard 
links, saving not only disk space but loading time and RAM when they are 
mapped from the same inode.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com