Description Christian Weisgerber 2003-02-18 19:00:05 UTC

bash's process substitution feature is implemented by way of either
/dev/fd/* or named pipes in /tmp.  The configure script detects the
existence of /dev/fd/ and chooses that scheme.  However, 5.0's devfs
only provides for /dev/fd/[0-2].  bash tries to use other descriptors
and fails:

bash$ cat <(cat /COPYRIGHT)
cat: /dev/fd/63: No such file or directory

The patch below checks whether higher descriptors are available
before enabling the use of /dev/fd for process substitution.  If
the check fails, named pipes will be used instead.

Note that mounting fdescfs on /dev/fd will enable higher descriptors.