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Is “/bin/[.exe” a legitimate file? [Cygwin, Windows 10] [duplicate]


What is the purpose of square bracket executableHow exactly does “/bin/[” work?Cygwin installation messageFile not found (cygwin on Windows)Cygwin: CD to Windows paths easilyCygwin header file locationCygwin on Windows: Can't open displayCygwin/X DISPLAY number no longer :0?Cannot login or ssh to non-admin Cygwin user this month but could last month and still can for other non-admin userCygwin + /usr/bin/xterm: Xt error: Can't open display: :0Windows/Cygwin/Python: Resolution depends on manual entry or shell script?Cygwin: installing Seismic Unix - error during make install






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2
















This question already has an answer here:



  • What is the purpose of square bracket executable

    3 answers



I can not find anything about this, is it a known file?
I am using a CYGWIN based terminal on windows 10



Here are their locations and the commands I used.



$ find -name [*
./bin/[.exe
./usr/bin/[.exe



$ ls -l -a -r /* | grep [-.*>]
...all other files that match this...
-rwxr-xr-x 1 X 197121 67134 Nov 6 14:22 [.exe
drwxr-xr-x 1 X 197121 0 Apr 2 18:15 ..
drwxr-xr-x 1 X 197121 0 Jan 26 03:20 .


I would like more information on this file and whether or not I can remove it.










share|improve this question









New contributor




Joe is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.











marked as duplicate by roaima, Thomas Dickey, Michael Homer, Rui F Ribeiro, muru 2 days ago


This question has been asked before and already has an answer. If those answers do not fully address your question, please ask a new question.


















  • Not necessarily, I didn't know what it was, all the times I've ls'ed into /bin/ No google searches for things close to and the title would provide much to the direct answer here below. Updated the title for relevance

    – Joe
    Apr 3 at 0:24


















2
















This question already has an answer here:



  • What is the purpose of square bracket executable

    3 answers



I can not find anything about this, is it a known file?
I am using a CYGWIN based terminal on windows 10



Here are their locations and the commands I used.



$ find -name [*
./bin/[.exe
./usr/bin/[.exe



$ ls -l -a -r /* | grep [-.*>]
...all other files that match this...
-rwxr-xr-x 1 X 197121 67134 Nov 6 14:22 [.exe
drwxr-xr-x 1 X 197121 0 Apr 2 18:15 ..
drwxr-xr-x 1 X 197121 0 Jan 26 03:20 .


I would like more information on this file and whether or not I can remove it.










share|improve this question









New contributor




Joe is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.











marked as duplicate by roaima, Thomas Dickey, Michael Homer, Rui F Ribeiro, muru 2 days ago


This question has been asked before and already has an answer. If those answers do not fully address your question, please ask a new question.


















  • Not necessarily, I didn't know what it was, all the times I've ls'ed into /bin/ No google searches for things close to and the title would provide much to the direct answer here below. Updated the title for relevance

    – Joe
    Apr 3 at 0:24














2












2








2


1







This question already has an answer here:



  • What is the purpose of square bracket executable

    3 answers



I can not find anything about this, is it a known file?
I am using a CYGWIN based terminal on windows 10



Here are their locations and the commands I used.



$ find -name [*
./bin/[.exe
./usr/bin/[.exe



$ ls -l -a -r /* | grep [-.*>]
...all other files that match this...
-rwxr-xr-x 1 X 197121 67134 Nov 6 14:22 [.exe
drwxr-xr-x 1 X 197121 0 Apr 2 18:15 ..
drwxr-xr-x 1 X 197121 0 Jan 26 03:20 .


I would like more information on this file and whether or not I can remove it.










share|improve this question









New contributor




Joe is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.













This question already has an answer here:



  • What is the purpose of square bracket executable

    3 answers



I can not find anything about this, is it a known file?
I am using a CYGWIN based terminal on windows 10



Here are their locations and the commands I used.



$ find -name [*
./bin/[.exe
./usr/bin/[.exe



$ ls -l -a -r /* | grep [-.*>]
...all other files that match this...
-rwxr-xr-x 1 X 197121 67134 Nov 6 14:22 [.exe
drwxr-xr-x 1 X 197121 0 Apr 2 18:15 ..
drwxr-xr-x 1 X 197121 0 Jan 26 03:20 .


I would like more information on this file and whether or not I can remove it.





This question already has an answer here:



  • What is the purpose of square bracket executable

    3 answers







shell cygwin






share|improve this question









New contributor




Joe is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.











share|improve this question









New contributor




Joe is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.









share|improve this question




share|improve this question








edited 2 days ago









Rui F Ribeiro

41.9k1483142




41.9k1483142






New contributor




Joe is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.









asked Apr 2 at 22:24









JoeJoe

1195




1195




New contributor




Joe is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.





New contributor





Joe is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.






Joe is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.




marked as duplicate by roaima, Thomas Dickey, Michael Homer, Rui F Ribeiro, muru 2 days ago


This question has been asked before and already has an answer. If those answers do not fully address your question, please ask a new question.









marked as duplicate by roaima, Thomas Dickey, Michael Homer, Rui F Ribeiro, muru 2 days ago


This question has been asked before and already has an answer. If those answers do not fully address your question, please ask a new question.














  • Not necessarily, I didn't know what it was, all the times I've ls'ed into /bin/ No google searches for things close to and the title would provide much to the direct answer here below. Updated the title for relevance

    – Joe
    Apr 3 at 0:24


















  • Not necessarily, I didn't know what it was, all the times I've ls'ed into /bin/ No google searches for things close to and the title would provide much to the direct answer here below. Updated the title for relevance

    – Joe
    Apr 3 at 0:24

















Not necessarily, I didn't know what it was, all the times I've ls'ed into /bin/ No google searches for things close to and the title would provide much to the direct answer here below. Updated the title for relevance

– Joe
Apr 3 at 0:24






Not necessarily, I didn't know what it was, all the times I've ls'ed into /bin/ No google searches for things close to and the title would provide much to the direct answer here below. Updated the title for relevance

– Joe
Apr 3 at 0:24











1 Answer
1






active

oldest

votes


















8














You should not remove that file. In general, don't remove random files that you have not created yourself.



It's the executable file for the [ utility. This utility is exactly the same as the test utility but requires that the last operand is ].



See man [ and man test.



Example of use:



[ -n "hello" ] && echo '"hello" is a non-empty string'


You would also be able to use



/bin/[.exe -n "hello" ] && echo 'That works too'


(though you don't need to specify the .exe suffix on the command line)



Note that /bin/[.exe is the executable file for the external [ utility. This utility is very often also available as a built-in utility in your shell. If your shell is bash, then man bash (and help [) would document it.



The external [ in /bin or /usr/bin is used by shells that don't have this utility as a built-in, or when executing a test from something that is not a shell (e.g. with -exec through find).



Related:



  • How exactly does "/bin/[" work?





share|improve this answer

























  • This is ironically enough, hilarious. I did not know that was a legitimate executable. I thought it as a potential security risk through a regex related attack. Thank you very much for this information, it was thoroughly explained well,... formerly not, (now should be for others), provided through google/forum indexing.

    – Joe
    Apr 3 at 0:14






  • 1





    Searching for punctuation is problematic...

    – stolenmoment
    2 days ago











  • Kusalanada, Cygwin is a pretty good reimplementation of the Linux/UNIX shell environment for Windows. Shell, GNU tools, even an X Windows display server. (Far better than WSL, in my opinion.) You don't specify the .exe suffix when using a Cygwin tool. So you would ls -l rather than ls.exe -l (although you can do the second if you insist).

    – roaima
    2 days ago












  • @roaima Thanks. I last used Cygwin in early 2000 so my memory was a bit foggy.

    – Kusalananda
    2 days ago






  • 1





    /bin/[ is typically called when invoked from non-Bourne-like shells, like csh -c '"[" a -nt b "]"' or in things like find ... -exec [ -f ] ; ...

    – Stéphane Chazelas
    2 days ago


















1 Answer
1






active

oldest

votes








1 Answer
1






active

oldest

votes









active

oldest

votes






active

oldest

votes









8














You should not remove that file. In general, don't remove random files that you have not created yourself.



It's the executable file for the [ utility. This utility is exactly the same as the test utility but requires that the last operand is ].



See man [ and man test.



Example of use:



[ -n "hello" ] && echo '"hello" is a non-empty string'


You would also be able to use



/bin/[.exe -n "hello" ] && echo 'That works too'


(though you don't need to specify the .exe suffix on the command line)



Note that /bin/[.exe is the executable file for the external [ utility. This utility is very often also available as a built-in utility in your shell. If your shell is bash, then man bash (and help [) would document it.



The external [ in /bin or /usr/bin is used by shells that don't have this utility as a built-in, or when executing a test from something that is not a shell (e.g. with -exec through find).



Related:



  • How exactly does "/bin/[" work?





share|improve this answer

























  • This is ironically enough, hilarious. I did not know that was a legitimate executable. I thought it as a potential security risk through a regex related attack. Thank you very much for this information, it was thoroughly explained well,... formerly not, (now should be for others), provided through google/forum indexing.

    – Joe
    Apr 3 at 0:14






  • 1





    Searching for punctuation is problematic...

    – stolenmoment
    2 days ago











  • Kusalanada, Cygwin is a pretty good reimplementation of the Linux/UNIX shell environment for Windows. Shell, GNU tools, even an X Windows display server. (Far better than WSL, in my opinion.) You don't specify the .exe suffix when using a Cygwin tool. So you would ls -l rather than ls.exe -l (although you can do the second if you insist).

    – roaima
    2 days ago












  • @roaima Thanks. I last used Cygwin in early 2000 so my memory was a bit foggy.

    – Kusalananda
    2 days ago






  • 1





    /bin/[ is typically called when invoked from non-Bourne-like shells, like csh -c '"[" a -nt b "]"' or in things like find ... -exec [ -f ] ; ...

    – Stéphane Chazelas
    2 days ago
















8














You should not remove that file. In general, don't remove random files that you have not created yourself.



It's the executable file for the [ utility. This utility is exactly the same as the test utility but requires that the last operand is ].



See man [ and man test.



Example of use:



[ -n "hello" ] && echo '"hello" is a non-empty string'


You would also be able to use



/bin/[.exe -n "hello" ] && echo 'That works too'


(though you don't need to specify the .exe suffix on the command line)



Note that /bin/[.exe is the executable file for the external [ utility. This utility is very often also available as a built-in utility in your shell. If your shell is bash, then man bash (and help [) would document it.



The external [ in /bin or /usr/bin is used by shells that don't have this utility as a built-in, or when executing a test from something that is not a shell (e.g. with -exec through find).



Related:



  • How exactly does "/bin/[" work?





share|improve this answer

























  • This is ironically enough, hilarious. I did not know that was a legitimate executable. I thought it as a potential security risk through a regex related attack. Thank you very much for this information, it was thoroughly explained well,... formerly not, (now should be for others), provided through google/forum indexing.

    – Joe
    Apr 3 at 0:14






  • 1





    Searching for punctuation is problematic...

    – stolenmoment
    2 days ago











  • Kusalanada, Cygwin is a pretty good reimplementation of the Linux/UNIX shell environment for Windows. Shell, GNU tools, even an X Windows display server. (Far better than WSL, in my opinion.) You don't specify the .exe suffix when using a Cygwin tool. So you would ls -l rather than ls.exe -l (although you can do the second if you insist).

    – roaima
    2 days ago












  • @roaima Thanks. I last used Cygwin in early 2000 so my memory was a bit foggy.

    – Kusalananda
    2 days ago






  • 1





    /bin/[ is typically called when invoked from non-Bourne-like shells, like csh -c '"[" a -nt b "]"' or in things like find ... -exec [ -f ] ; ...

    – Stéphane Chazelas
    2 days ago














8












8








8







You should not remove that file. In general, don't remove random files that you have not created yourself.



It's the executable file for the [ utility. This utility is exactly the same as the test utility but requires that the last operand is ].



See man [ and man test.



Example of use:



[ -n "hello" ] && echo '"hello" is a non-empty string'


You would also be able to use



/bin/[.exe -n "hello" ] && echo 'That works too'


(though you don't need to specify the .exe suffix on the command line)



Note that /bin/[.exe is the executable file for the external [ utility. This utility is very often also available as a built-in utility in your shell. If your shell is bash, then man bash (and help [) would document it.



The external [ in /bin or /usr/bin is used by shells that don't have this utility as a built-in, or when executing a test from something that is not a shell (e.g. with -exec through find).



Related:



  • How exactly does "/bin/[" work?





share|improve this answer















You should not remove that file. In general, don't remove random files that you have not created yourself.



It's the executable file for the [ utility. This utility is exactly the same as the test utility but requires that the last operand is ].



See man [ and man test.



Example of use:



[ -n "hello" ] && echo '"hello" is a non-empty string'


You would also be able to use



/bin/[.exe -n "hello" ] && echo 'That works too'


(though you don't need to specify the .exe suffix on the command line)



Note that /bin/[.exe is the executable file for the external [ utility. This utility is very often also available as a built-in utility in your shell. If your shell is bash, then man bash (and help [) would document it.



The external [ in /bin or /usr/bin is used by shells that don't have this utility as a built-in, or when executing a test from something that is not a shell (e.g. with -exec through find).



Related:



  • How exactly does "/bin/[" work?






share|improve this answer














share|improve this answer



share|improve this answer








edited 2 days ago

























answered Apr 2 at 22:30









KusalanandaKusalananda

140k17261434




140k17261434












  • This is ironically enough, hilarious. I did not know that was a legitimate executable. I thought it as a potential security risk through a regex related attack. Thank you very much for this information, it was thoroughly explained well,... formerly not, (now should be for others), provided through google/forum indexing.

    – Joe
    Apr 3 at 0:14






  • 1





    Searching for punctuation is problematic...

    – stolenmoment
    2 days ago











  • Kusalanada, Cygwin is a pretty good reimplementation of the Linux/UNIX shell environment for Windows. Shell, GNU tools, even an X Windows display server. (Far better than WSL, in my opinion.) You don't specify the .exe suffix when using a Cygwin tool. So you would ls -l rather than ls.exe -l (although you can do the second if you insist).

    – roaima
    2 days ago












  • @roaima Thanks. I last used Cygwin in early 2000 so my memory was a bit foggy.

    – Kusalananda
    2 days ago






  • 1





    /bin/[ is typically called when invoked from non-Bourne-like shells, like csh -c '"[" a -nt b "]"' or in things like find ... -exec [ -f ] ; ...

    – Stéphane Chazelas
    2 days ago


















  • This is ironically enough, hilarious. I did not know that was a legitimate executable. I thought it as a potential security risk through a regex related attack. Thank you very much for this information, it was thoroughly explained well,... formerly not, (now should be for others), provided through google/forum indexing.

    – Joe
    Apr 3 at 0:14






  • 1





    Searching for punctuation is problematic...

    – stolenmoment
    2 days ago











  • Kusalanada, Cygwin is a pretty good reimplementation of the Linux/UNIX shell environment for Windows. Shell, GNU tools, even an X Windows display server. (Far better than WSL, in my opinion.) You don't specify the .exe suffix when using a Cygwin tool. So you would ls -l rather than ls.exe -l (although you can do the second if you insist).

    – roaima
    2 days ago












  • @roaima Thanks. I last used Cygwin in early 2000 so my memory was a bit foggy.

    – Kusalananda
    2 days ago






  • 1





    /bin/[ is typically called when invoked from non-Bourne-like shells, like csh -c '"[" a -nt b "]"' or in things like find ... -exec [ -f ] ; ...

    – Stéphane Chazelas
    2 days ago

















This is ironically enough, hilarious. I did not know that was a legitimate executable. I thought it as a potential security risk through a regex related attack. Thank you very much for this information, it was thoroughly explained well,... formerly not, (now should be for others), provided through google/forum indexing.

– Joe
Apr 3 at 0:14





This is ironically enough, hilarious. I did not know that was a legitimate executable. I thought it as a potential security risk through a regex related attack. Thank you very much for this information, it was thoroughly explained well,... formerly not, (now should be for others), provided through google/forum indexing.

– Joe
Apr 3 at 0:14




1




1





Searching for punctuation is problematic...

– stolenmoment
2 days ago





Searching for punctuation is problematic...

– stolenmoment
2 days ago













Kusalanada, Cygwin is a pretty good reimplementation of the Linux/UNIX shell environment for Windows. Shell, GNU tools, even an X Windows display server. (Far better than WSL, in my opinion.) You don't specify the .exe suffix when using a Cygwin tool. So you would ls -l rather than ls.exe -l (although you can do the second if you insist).

– roaima
2 days ago






Kusalanada, Cygwin is a pretty good reimplementation of the Linux/UNIX shell environment for Windows. Shell, GNU tools, even an X Windows display server. (Far better than WSL, in my opinion.) You don't specify the .exe suffix when using a Cygwin tool. So you would ls -l rather than ls.exe -l (although you can do the second if you insist).

– roaima
2 days ago














@roaima Thanks. I last used Cygwin in early 2000 so my memory was a bit foggy.

– Kusalananda
2 days ago





@roaima Thanks. I last used Cygwin in early 2000 so my memory was a bit foggy.

– Kusalananda
2 days ago




1




1





/bin/[ is typically called when invoked from non-Bourne-like shells, like csh -c '"[" a -nt b "]"' or in things like find ... -exec [ -f ] ; ...

– Stéphane Chazelas
2 days ago






/bin/[ is typically called when invoked from non-Bourne-like shells, like csh -c '"[" a -nt b "]"' or in things like find ... -exec [ -f ] ; ...

– Stéphane Chazelas
2 days ago




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