&& and ; operators (Was Re: [GLLUG] grep help)

Edward Glowacki glowack2 at gmail.com
Wed May 11 16:34:24 EDT 2005


Isn't it when you use the && (not ';') that the second one runs only
if the first doesn't return an error?  Like "cd /etc && cat passwd"
will only try to display the password file if it could successfully
change to /etc.

-ED

On 5/11/05, Staff Staff <Staff at meridian.mi.us> wrote:
> Mike says he's got it, but I'll post this for the group, since I think
> this might be the easiest and quickest solution:
> 
> The '&&' and ';' parameters allow you to specify multiple commands on a
> single command line.  In the example provided by Mike, he wants to run a
> head and a tail on the same file at the same time.  The above mentioned
> tools allow us to use the combination of head and tail commands already
> specified by others:
> head -1 <filename> && tail -3 <filename>
> or
> head -1 <filename> ; tail -3 <filename>
> 
> The difference between the && and the ; is that when you use the ';'
> the second command will only run if the first command does not return an
> error.
> 
> Good luck, and have fun playing!
> 
> -stephen
> 
> Stephen Gebes
> Meridian Township
> 
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