A file named "["?

Rick Stevens ricks at alldigital.com
Tue Jun 5 18:28:57 UTC 2012


On 06/05/2012 11:19 AM, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> On Tue, 5 Jun 2012, Beartooth wrote:
>
>>
>> 	On one of my PCs, /bin contains an executable file whose name is
>> the left square bracket, and nothing else.
>>
>> 	Opening it with gedit gets something that's part text (generally
>> if not all commented out) and part stuff I can't read.
>>
>> 	Is there a test, usable by one who knows no code, whether it's
>> malware??
>>
>> 	What should I do?
>
>    you should leave it there -- it's an actual command.

It's actually in /usr/bin. It's legit and a version of the "test"
command. Buried in it (via the "strings" command), you'll find:

Usage: test EXPRESSION
   or:  test
   or:  [ EXPRESSION ]
   or:  [ ]
   or:  [ OPTION

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