On Tue, Nov 02, 2021 at 03:23:15AM +0700, Robert Elz wrote: > Date: Mon, 1 Nov 2021 12:03:48 -0400 > From: Greg Wooledge <g...@wooledge.org> > Message-ID: <YYAP5PynR6Us/FV/@wooledge.org> > > | > bash: : command not found > | > bash: : command not found > | > | Because this is you, I can't be sure whether you are correctly pasting > | the output from your terminal into email, > > Actually, because it is him, it is more likely that he has "cat" aliased > to ' ' somehow, since he loves aliases so much.
Not a bad guess, but I can't reproduce it that way: unicorn:~$ bash unicorn:~$ alias cat=' ' unicorn:~$ cat /dev/null bash: /dev/null: Permission denied unicorn:~$ alias cat='' unicorn:~$ cat /dev/null bash: /dev/null: Permission denied Then I tried with a non-breaking space, and that's closer, but.... unicorn:~$ alias cat=' ' unicorn:~$ cat /dev/null bash: : command not found The "space nbsp space" in that result is interesting, but I don't think that's what he's doing, even accounting for the possiblity that he typed one space where the terminal shows three.
