{ while sleep 1; do echo ZzZzzZ; done } is valid. But this is not documented, infact the documentation explicitly says that a semicolon or a newline must separate the enclosed list. – thanks geirha at Freenode
{ <LIST>; }
{
<LIST>
}
The list <LIST> is simply executed in the current shell environment. The list must be terminated with a newline or semicolon. For parsing reasons, the curly braces must be separated from <LIST> by a semicolon and blanks if they're in the same line! 1)2)
This is known as a group command. The return status is the exit status (exit code) of the list.
The input and output filedescriptors are cumulative:
{
echo "PASSWD follows"
cat /etc/passwd
echo
echo "GROUPS follows"
cat /etc/group
} >output.txt
This compound command also usually is the body of a function definition, though not the only compound command that's valid there:
print_help() {
echo "Options:"
echo "-h This help text"
echo "-f FILE Use config file FILE"
echo "-u USER Run as user USER"
}
try_catch() {
{ # Try-block:
eval "$@"
} ||
{ # Catch-block:
echo "An error occurred"
return -1
}
}
{ while sleep 1; do echo ZzZzzZ; done } is valid. But this is not documented, infact the documentation explicitly says that a semicolon or a newline must separate the enclosed list. – thanks geirha at Freenode