Re: /usr/bin/[ what is it?

["Dwayne C. Litzenberger" <dlitz@dlitz.net>]

On Thu, Aug 10, 2006 at 10:17:46AM +0200, Johannes Wiedersich wrote:
> jw@johannes2:~$ dpkg -S /usr/bin/[
> dpkg: /usr/bin/[ not found.
> jw@johannes2:~$ dpkg -S /usr/bin/\[
> dpkg: /usr/bin/[ not found.

$ dpkg -S '/usr/bin/\['
coreutils: /usr/bin/[

man dpkg(1) says:

	      dpkg -S | --search filename-search-pattern ...
                 Search for a filename from installed packages.

Since dpkg is expecting a pattern, you have to escape the [ from both the 
shell and dpkg's filename-search-pattern matching engine.

As others have said, /usr/bin/[ is roughly equivalent to /usr/bin/test.

--
Dwayne C. Litzenberger <dlitz@dlitz.net>