How is it called and what's the exact meaning of issuing a terminal command like $(some command string)?

Question

Does the operator

$()

issued in a terminal window have a specific name?

What's the exact meaning of this operator, I suppose it's a sort of Evaluate... but I'm not sure this is covering all its applications

For instance I know that

 cd $(brew --prefix)

will evaluate the install path of brew to cd to it

This is the typical question that could be solved by googling but... googling a symbol without knowing the name ...

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:30

1

That is simply bash syntax for "command substitution" that specifies that the output of the command inside the $() will be evaluated and then replaced.

So in this case the output from 'brew --prefix' will be returned and added to the cd command.

It is equivalent to the use of backtics. For example:

echo `date`

There is quite a bit more about both syntactical options here.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:30

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answered Nov 26 '16 at 09:44

gview

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ok but.... no other possible usages applications? does it have a name? doesn't it? – koalaok Nov 26 '16 at 09:45
I updated. Technically it's referred to as "command substitution". – gview Nov 26 '16 at 09:49

How is it called and what's the exact meaning of issuing a terminal command like $(some command string)?

1 Answers1