[TUHS] Use of "{}" in the Shell?

[Peter Pentchev via TUHS]

On Tue, Aug 04, 2026 at 12:47:44AM -0600, Arnold Robbins via TUHS wrote:
> Warner Losh via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
> 
> > I've not examined the source to Thompson shell closely to know if it
> > secretly does this (and that's why Steve Bourne implemented it), or if
> > that's something Bourne invented.
> 
> Braces are also allowed where "do" and "done" are.
> 
> I have always suspected, but never bothered to verify, that this is
> the case so that shell scripts could look more like C if one wanted
> them to. For example, in Bash:
> 
> 	$ for ((i = 1; i <= 3; i++))
> 	> {
> 	>     echo $i
> 	> }
> 	1
> 	2
> 	3

Well, that's several kinds of Bash-specific syntax right there :)
(nothing wrong with that, just pointing it out)

I think that in the original implementation the main point was indeed to
be able to put more than one command in a || or && pipeline as in
my ... || { ...; exit 1; } example, or to redirect their input or
output: { printf header; command; printf footer; } | processing-command
(similar to the dash manual page example).

G'luck,
Peter

-- 
Peter Pentchev  roam at ringlet.net roam at debian.org peter at morpheusly.com
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