Re: funsub questions

[Greg Wooledge]

On Wed, Dec 13, 2023 at 08:50:48PM -0500, Zachary Santer wrote:
> Would there be a purpose in implementing ${< *file*; } to be the equivalent
> of $(< *file* )? Does $(< *file* ) itself actually fork a subshell?

$(< file) does indeed fork.  The only difference between $(< file) and
$(cat file) is the latter also does an exec (but it's portable).

If you'd like to read the contents of a file into a variable, the
"read" and "readarray" (aka "mapfile") builtins are usually better
choices anyway.  $(< file) would only be useful if you want the entire
content in a single string variable, which is a questionable idea in
most programs.