@bros/Soren: I experience the same problem with my bash 2.05b.0.

The following does work and demonstrates the principle being described:

cat afile | (ls afile; rm afile; ls afile; head -1)

However, the head command on my system causes STDIN to stop flowing; i.e.:

cat afile | (head -1; head -1)

only returns 1 line:

daemon:x:1:1:Owner of many system processes:/usr/sbin:/bin/sh

A workaround is to replace each 'head -1' with ‘read line; echo “$line”‘

Allen

Good work.

I can confirm that the exec redirection script that you both have problems with works exactly as advertised under bash 3.2.25 and 2.05b (well, once you’ve corrected /etc/passed to /etc/passwd, of course).

On the off-chance that it’s being run under a non-Bourne shell, as Corne pointed out, try prefixing your script with the line:

#!/bin/sh

If that doesn’t work, post the actual error message you see.

Thanks for a really great article. These are things I really need, and have not been able to learn anywhere else.

I have the same problem as ‘bros’ with GNU bash, version 3.00.16(1): the ‘exec [from] afile’ reads afile as a list of commands (and closes the terminal when finished).

[and again same problem as ‘bros’ the editor is not happy about the left-arrow “[from]” sign]

Thanks for a really great article. These are things I really need, and have not been able to learn anywhere else.

I have the same problem as ‘bros’ with GNU bash, version 3.00.16(1): the ‘exec

the exec with afile as stdin trick doesn’t work for me
it seems that exec it trying to execute the
lines of afile and fails (bash 3.2.25)…

just FYI :)

anyways, great article…thanks.

the “exec