[Solved] what is the signal *) means in linux shell


There is no *), the * is part of the pattern.
The syntax of a shell case statement is:

case WORD in
    PATTERN) COMMANDS;;
esac

in your case:

  • WORD is "`uname`" : Name of the operating system, like “Linux” or “CYGWIN_NT-5.1”.
  • PATTERN is CYGWIN*: CYGWIN followed by any number of any characters
  • COMMANDS is cygwin=true: Set the variable to “true”

So your snippet sets the variable cygwin to true when the operating system name starts with “CYGWIN”.

solved what is the signal *) means in linux shell