Stupid bash question

[Joe Smith]

Tony Nelson wrote:
 > The reason seems weak to me, but test does not require a closing
 > square bracket, while [ does, and:
 > ...
 >> GNU Coding Standards now declare that the behaviour of binary
 >> should not depend on its name.

 From http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/User-Interfaces.html:
> Please don't make the behavior of a utility depend on the name used to
> invoke it. It is useful sometimes to make a link to a utility with a
> different name, and that should not change what it does.

Sounds more like a request than a declaration ;-)

I wish they had provided some rationale, seeing as how the practice has 
a long history on Unix, and I (at least) have not run into any situation 
where it caused a problem.

Requiring the closing bracket or not seems like a trivial difference in 
behavior, no?

Yep, I'll go with 'weak' as well.

Over a few hundred systems, this must be wasting almost a penny's worth 
of space.

<Joe