A quickie: unexpected files in /system/bin

[HappyJoe]

I opened /system/bin and saw two files at the top of the ls -a -l command output: '[' and '[['. Both were links into busybox. What is their function? A bit like '.' and '..' maybe?

 

[kevin@teslacoilsw]

In unix shell scripting, [ is a shortcut for the "test" command. This means instead of writing something like

if test $i == 10; then
  echo "equals!"
fi

One can write:

if [ $i == 10 ]; then
  echo "equals!"
fi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_(Unix)


Not sure about [[ but i imagine it's related.

 

[HappyJoe]

Thanks for that '[[' is also a kosher bash ('compound') command.

Something new every day!