Robert Elz graciously pointed out that 2.9.4 implictly says that ( is in fact
an operator, which solves my problem. Thank you to Robert!
----- Original Message -----
From: Mark Galeck <mark_gal...@pacbell.net>
To: "austin-group-l@opengroup.org" <austin-group-l@opengroup.org>
Sent: Monday, September 5, 2016 1:52 PM
Subject: how is '(' recognized by the shell standard as a token?
Hello,
when '(' appears in the shell input, how does the section 2.3 Token
Recognition, of the shell standard, recognize it?
'(' can be start of a subshell, or function, or optional start of a `case`
pattern, but nowhere do I see any indication that this is an operator, or
reserved word. Hence it seems to me, that when following section 2.3, no
earlier rule than 9 would apply, so either by rule 9 or 11, '(' is part of a
word.
But that is not how dash behaves:
$ f(
dash: Syntax error: newline unexpected (expecting ")")
$
instead of trying to execute 'f('
So how is '(' recognized?
Thank you,
Mark
