Intentionaly top posting: I just wanted to say that the question is resolved,
and record my understanding.
Thanks to all who replied!
Repeating the command for posterity:
eval `ssh-agent`
I now see that it is a two step process, first the backticks cause ssh-agent to
be run, producing 3 lines of output.
Then, in accordance with the explanation of eval I read in man bash, those
three lines of output are concatenated and evaluated (executed).
At first I hadn't noticed that those were backticks, I assumed, without looking
closely, that they were single quotes.
Then, in accordance with my vague recollection of what I think of as Greg
Woolidge's typical advice (which I (may mis-)remember as "always quote"), I
thought the backticks (that I incorrectly saw as single quotes) were just the
"proper" way to specify a command to be eval'ed.
For posterity, here is what man bash says:
<quote>
eval [arg ...]
The args are read and concatenated together into a single command.
This command is then read and executed by the shell, and its exit status is
returned as the value of eval. If there are no args, or only null
arguments, eval returns 0.
<\quote>
Another part of my misunderstanding stemmed from seeing only one command on
that line, and wondering what had to be concatenated. (Now I get it.)
Nothing new below this line -- in fact, almost all deleted:
On Friday, June 10, 2022 11:59:42 AM The Wanderer wrote:
> On 2022-06-10 at 11:25, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
