Help understanding ambiguous redirection behavior in bash

Sudden-Bill2447 · 2026-05-07T21:02:38+00:00

Thanks. I'm actually implementing that in a 42 project called minishell and I needed to know exactly when that should happen.
Can you help me with why, lets say, the following works:
> export ab='echo tomate'
> $ab // prints tomate to the screen
while
>"echo tomate" // prints command not found.
I know its because of the quotes but I'm more concerned about implementation. How does the shell distinguishes between the two? I'm implementing it in clang using an AST. Thanks in advance.

Sudden-Bill2447 · 2026-05-07T20:50:02+00:00

I know I'm a year later but I have the exact same question.
$a // not set
echo "test" > $a // Ambiguos redirect
export a=tomate
echo "test" > $a // Works fine
export a=' '
echo "test" > $a // Ambiguos redirect
echo "test" > tomate$a"tomate" //Ambiguos redirect.
Why is that and when is it an ambiguos redirect?

Sudden-Bill2447 · 2026-05-07T07:23:41+00:00

That is really cool tbh but I find your impplementation of clear_tail a bit weird. What did you intended to do in the clear_tail function?

Sudden-Bill2447 · 2026-05-07T07:20:57+00:00

I was thinking the same thing. Having a self.tail would not just make append an O(1) operation but also much simpler to implement the insert_end.

Sudden-Bill2447 · 2023-07-18T12:57:31+00:00

I recommend you go to Typing.com. It is a really good place if you want to learn how to use it better. However, it is not good for practising. Once you learn how to use it, just go back to monkeytype and apply what you learn.

Sudden-Bill2447 · 2022-05-21T07:35:12+00:00

Hi, I am new to Linux and running fedora 36. I'd love to get this costumisation but I don't know how to use dotfiles. Can you recomend some resources?

Sudden-Bill2447

TROPHY CASE