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Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2010 08:14:04 +0000
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Subject: Re: Suspicious EXE named <left bracket>.exe in c:\cygwin\bin?
From: Andy Koppe <andy DOT koppe AT gmail DOT com>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
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On 12 December 2010 05:01, Jeffrey Walton wrote:
> The executable name is suspicious at best. Attempting to search
> http://cygwin.com/packages/ results in an error "Invalid regular
> expression search string: `<left bracket>.exe`". Quotes, double quotes, and back
> ticks do not help during the search.
>
> What is this program supposed to do?

It's a synonym for the 'test' program for evaluating conditional
expressions, which allows stuff like this:

if [ $FOO = bar ]; then ...

The '[' in there invokes '[.exe'. Well, except that any shell that
cares about performance has a builtin for this to avoid forking a new
process for every conditional.

See also 'man test'.

Andy

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