Re: try to open file descriptor for input with 'exec' fails

[Chet Ramey]

juergen@kaesman.de wrote:

> Bash Version: 3.2
> Patch Level: 25
> Release Status: release
> 
> Description:
> In the following script i try to open a free file 
> descriptor for input from a file.
> The script should read lines out of a textfile, 
> output goes to stdout.
> This works fine till my last SUSE Linux 10.1 (sorry 
> I don't know the version of the bash).
> But now (opensuseLinux 10.3) the script aborts with 
> following error message:
> 
> ./doit: line 29: exec: 3: not found
> 
> This is the line where i try to open the file descriptor 
> for input:
> exec ${fd}<$inf

That form of redirection construct is not parsed the way you
are assuming.  The shell grammar has always required a number
before the `<' or `>' to specify a particular file descriptor.

Chet

-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
                       Live Strong.  No day but today.
Chet Ramey, ITS, CWRU    chet@case.edu    http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/~chet/