Chet Ramey wrote: > Linda Walsh wrote: > > A previous note had me wondering why the syntax for using > > curly braces to group expressions wasn't able to be the same as > > using 'paren's. > > Braces are reserved words. Parentheses are operators. Blame > Steve Bourne.
I wonder about the motivation, or was it just an "oversight"? Some tried to adjust this, - You did so in bash-1 (just found out by coincidence), although blanks were required, "{ cmd }". - D.Ritchie made them operators in the svr2-derived V8 shell, where "{cmd}" works. - and the SUS rationale to the command language explains that this step was delayed for portability reasons but left it open, "It is possible that a future version of the Shell [...]"