Broken backquote behavior in bash?

["bostonlinuxandunix" <user=37@nabble.blu.org>]

 I've got a server that's been giving strange errors lately. Most 
noticeably, when I login, 
I get several errors of the form 

    -bash: [: =: unary operator expected 

I've traced these to files under /etc/profile.d, and on further 
testing I find that the 
offending lines are using backquotes, e.g. 

        if [ `/usr/bin/id -u` = 0 ] ; then 

When I try to use backquotes on the command line on this server, I get 
no output. 
Even stranger, if I have a suspended vi job, then running something in 
backquotes 
terminates the vi process: 

    $ vi foo 
    ^Z 
    [1]+  Stopped                 nvi foo 
    $ echo `echo bar` 

    [1]+  Terminated              nvi foo 

If I do this on my other systems, I get 

    $ echo `echo bar` 
    bar 

and the vi job does not terminate. 

I've tried googling for these symptoms, but so far I haven't found a match. 
Has anyone else run across this odd behavior? What could be causing it? 



-- 
John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix 
GnuPG KeyID: 0xD5C7B5D9 / Email: [hidden email] 
GnuPG FP: 72 FB 39 4F 3C 3B D6 5B E0 C8 5A 6E F1 2C BE 99 

-- 
This message has been scanned for viruses and 
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is 
believed to be clean. 

_______________________________________________ 
Discuss mailing list 
[hidden email] 
http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss