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I saw this video which explains that when running a command in parentheses it actually runs the command in a subshell, which is a child process of the original shell. Running the following experiment:

// one shell with PID 5344
~$ (find /)

// another shell ~$ ps l F UID PID PPID PRI NI VSZ RSS WCHAN STAT TTY TIME COMMAND ... 0 1000 5344 5333 20 0 10888 5220 do_wai Ss pts/0 0:00 bash 0 1000 5384 5333 20 0 10888 5140 do_wai Ss pts/1 0:00 bash 0 1000 7239 5344 20 0 10860 3444 - R+ pts/0 0:00 find / 4 1000 7240 5384 20 0 11400 3224 - R+ pts/1 0:00 ps l

We can see that find / is a child of 5344, with no other shell in between. Wheres running:

// one shell with PID 5344
(cd /; find /)

// second shell ~$ ps l F UID PID PPID PRI NI VSZ RSS WCHAN STAT TTY TIME COMMAND ... 0 1000 5344 5333 20 0 10888 5220 do_wai Ss pts/0 0:00 bash 0 1000 5384 5333 20 0 10888 5140 do_wai Ss pts/1 0:00 bash 1 1000 7379 5344 20 0 10888 3036 do_wai S+ pts/0 0:00 bash 4 1000 7380 7379 20 0 10864 3536 - R+ pts/0 0:01 find / 4 1000 7381 5384 20 0 11400 3184 - R+ pts/1 0:00 ps l

Now we can see that other shell in between. My guess is that it is some optimization of bash: In the first case, it doesn't really have to spawn another shell, so it just doesn't do it. In the second case, since the commands include cd /, which will have affect on the current shell, it has to spawn another process. Is that so?

YoavKlein
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  • Related, if not a dupe: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/401020/why-bash-does-not-spawn-a-subshell-for-simple-commands https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/430050/why-doesnt-spawn-a-new-child-process-when-run-in-background – Kusalananda Jan 06 '21 at 19:38
  • I was going to say what you said in the last paragraph. When a spec say it dose something, it means that it must behave as if it did the something. So yes I believe it is optimisation.

    However this is not based on any in depth knowledge of bash. It is based on knowledge of other programming languages and compilers.

    – ctrl-alt-delor Jan 06 '21 at 19:46
  • Note also that running a command in a subshell environment doesn't have to involve child processes, they're just the easy way of implementing subshells. – ilkkachu Jan 06 '21 at 21:05

0 Answers0