The Linux Command Line, 2nd Edition

36EXOTICA

In this, the final chapter of our journey, we will look at some odds and ends. While we have certainly covered a lot of ground in the previous chapters, there are many bash features that we have not covered. Most are fairly obscure and useful mainly to those integrating bash into a Linux distribution. However, there are a few that, while not in common use, are helpful for certain programming problems. We will cover them here.

Group Commands and Subshells

bash allows commands to be grouped together. This can be done in one of two ways, either with a group command or with a subshell.

Here is the syntax of a group command:

{ command1; ...