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Undocumented for-loop construct
From: |
Klaas Vantournhout |
Subject: |
Undocumented for-loop construct |
Date: |
Thu, 6 Aug 2020 23:50:49 +0200 |
Dear Bash-developers,
Recently I came across a surprising undocumented bash-feature
$ for i in 1 2 3; { echo $i; };
The usage of curly-braces instead of the well-documented do ... done
construct was a complete surprise to me and even lead me to open the
following question on stack overflow:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/63247449/alternate-for-loop-construct
The community is unable to find any reference to this feature, except
* a brief slide in some youtube presentation by Stephen Bourne:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kEJoWfobpA&t=2095
Relevant part starts at 34:55
* and the actual source code of bash and the Bourne Shell V7
Questions:
1) Is there a reason why this is undocumented?
2) Can this become documented?
3) What is the historical background behind this alternative construct?
Thanks in advance,
Klaas
- Undocumented for-loop construct,
Klaas Vantournhout <=