These are called shell operators and yes, there are more of them. I will give a brief overview of the most common among the two major classes, control operators and redirection operators, and how they work with respect to the bash shell.
A. Control operators
These are tokens that perform control functions, one of ||
, !
, &&
, &
, ;
, ;;
, |
, |&
, (
, or )
.
A.1 List terminators
-
;
: Will run one command after another has finished, irrespective of the outcome of the first.command1 ; command2
First
command1
is run, in the foreground, and once it has finished,command2
will be run.A newline that isn't in a string literal or after certain keywords is not equivalent to the semicolon operator. A list of
;
delimited simple commands is still a list - as in the shell's parser must still continue to read in the simple commands that follow a;
delimited simple command before executing, whereas a newline can delimit an entire command list - or list of lists. The difference is subtle, but complicated: given the shell has no previous imperative for reading in data following a newline, the newline marks a point where the shell can begin to evaluate the simple commands it has already read in, whereas a;
semi-colon does not. -
&
: This will run a command in the background, allowing you to continue working in the same shell.command1 & command2
Here,
command1
is launched in the background andcommand2
starts running in the foreground immediately, without waiting forcommand1
to exit.A newline after
command1
is optional.
A.2 Logical operators
-
&&
: Used to build AND lists, it allows you to run one command only if another exited successfully.command1 && command2
Here,
command2
will run aftercommand1
has finished and only ifcommand1
was successful (if its exit code was 0). Both commands are run in the foreground.This command can also be written
if command1 then command2 else false fi
or simply
if command1; then command2; fi
if the return status is ignored. -
||
: Used to build OR lists, it allows you to run one command only if another exited unsuccessfully.command1 || command2
Here,
command2
will only run ifcommand1
failed (if it returned an exit status other than 0). Both commands are run in the foreground.This command can also be written
if command1 then true else command2 fi
or in a shorter way
if ! command1; then command2; fi
.Note that
&&
and||
are left-associative; see Precedence of the shell logical operators &&, ||for more information. -
!
: This is the “not” operator, used to negate the return status of a command — return 0 if the command returns a nonzero status, return 1 if it returns the status 0.! command1
A.3 Pipe operator
-
|
: The pipe operator, it passes the output of one command as input to another. A command built from the pipe operator is called a pipeline.command1 | command2
Any output printed by
command1
is passed as input tocommand2
. -
|&
: This is a shorthand for2>&1 |
in bash and zsh. It passes both standard output and standard error of one command as input to another.command1 |& command2
A.4 Other list punctuation
;;
is used solely to mark the end of a case statement. Ksh, bash and zsh also support ;&
to fall through to the next case and ;;&
(not in ATT ksh) to go on and test subsequent cases.
(
and )
are used to group commands and launch them in a subshell. {
and }
also group commands, but do not launch them in a subshell. See this answer for a discussion of the various types of parentheses, brackets and braces in shell syntax.
B. Redirection Operators
These allow you to control the input and output of your commands. They can appear anywhere within a simple command or may follow a command. Redirections are processed in the order they appear, from left to right.
-
<
: Gives input to a command.command < file.txt
The above will execute
command
on the contents offile.txt
. -
<>
: same as above, but the file is open in read+write mode instead of read-only:command <> file.txt
If the file doesn't exist, it will be created.
That operator is rarely used because commands generally only read from their stdin, though it can come handy in a number of specific situations.
-
>
: Directs the output of a command into a file.command > out.txt
The above will save the output of
command
asout.txt
. If the file exists, its contents will be overwritten and if it does not exist it will be created.This operator is also often used to choose whether something should be printed to standard error or standard output:
command >out.txt 2>error.txt
In the example above,
>
will redirect standard output and2>
redirects standard error. Output can also be redirected using1>
but, since this is the default, the1
is usually omitted and it's written simply as>
.So, to run
command
onfile.txt
and save its output inout.txt
and any error messages inerror.txt
you would run:command < file.txt > out.txt 2> error.txt
-
>|
: Does the same as>
, but will overwrite the target, even if the shell has been configured to refuse overwriting (withset -C
orset -o noclobber
).command >| out.txt
If
out.txt
exists, the output ofcommand
will replace its content. If it does not exist it will be created. -
>>
: Does the same as>
, except that if the target file exists, the new data are appended.command >> out.txt
If
out.txt
exists, the output ofcommand
will be appended to it, after whatever is already in it. If it does not exist it will be created. -
&>
,>&
,>>&
and&>>
: (non-standard). Redirect both standard error and standard output, replacing or appending, respectively.command &> out.txt
Both standard error and standard output of
command
will be saved inout.txt
, overwriting its contents or creating it if it doesn't exist.command &>> out.txt
As above, except that if
out.txt
exists, the output and error ofcommand
will be appended to it.The
&>
variant originates inbash
, while the>&
variant comes from csh (decades earlier). They both conflict with other POSIX shell operators and should not be used in portablesh
scripts. -
<<
: A here document. It is often used to print multi-line strings.command << WORD Text WORD
Here,
command
will take everything until it finds the next occurrence ofWORD
,Text
in the example above, as input . WhileWORD
is oftenEoF
or variations thereof, it can be any alphanumeric (and not only) string you like. WhenWORD
is quoted, the text in the here document is treated literally and no expansions are performed (on variables for example). If it is unquoted, variables will be expanded. For more details, see the bash manual.If you want to pipe the output of
command << WORD ... WORD
directly into another command or commands, you have to put the pipe on the same line as<< WORD
, you can't put it after the terminating WORD or on the line following. For example:command << WORD | command2 | command3... Text WORD
-
<<<
: Here strings, similar to here documents, but intended for a single line. These exist only in the Unix port or rc (where it originated), zsh, some implementations of ksh, yash and bash.command <<< WORD
Whatever is given as
WORD
is expanded and its value is passed as input tocommand
. This is often used to pass the content of variables as input to a command. For example:$ foo="bar" $ sed 's/a/A/' <<< "$foo" bAr # as a short-cut for the standard: $ printf '%s\n' "$foo" | sed 's/a/A/' bAr # or sed 's/a/A/' << EOF $foo EOF
A few other operators (>&-
, x>&y
x<&y
) can be used to close or duplicate file descriptors. For details on them, please see the relevant section of your shell's manual (here for instance for bash).
That only covers the most common operators of Bourne-like shells. Some shells have a few additional redirection operators of their own.
Ksh, bash and zsh also have constructs <(…)
, >(…)
and =(…)
(that latter one in zsh
only). These are not redirections, but process substitution.
来源:stackexchange(https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/159513/what-are-the-shells-control-and-redirection-operators)
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