&> vs. >&

[Paul Jarc]

man bash:
# There are two formats for redirecting standard output and standard
# error:
#
#        &>word
# and
#        >&word
#
# Of the two forms, the first is preferred.

I think it's better to recommend the second form.  The first is an
incompatibility with SUSv3 (and POSIX, I assume), where "cmd &> file"
means to run cmd in the background, and truncate file.  This leads to
bad habits and portability problems.

It would also be useful to add a note for the second form that if the
word is numeric, it should be separated from >& with whitespace to
ensure it won't be confused for a descriptor dup.


paul