[OT] What does this pipe do?

[parv at pair.com]

in message <200701241547.l0OFlUJR098159 at lurza.secnetix.de>,
wrote Oliver Fromme thusly...
>
> Just for completeness, ">&" (file) and ">|" (pipe) are also
                                          ^^
                                          ^^
> supported by zsh (which is a bourne-shell like sh, ksh or bash).

The ">|" construct (in bash [23] & zsh 4), as I know, is to bypass
no-clobber option (when set of course) when redirecting to a file.
Actually, from zshall(1) ...

  >| word
  >! word
    Same as >, except that the file is truncated to zero  length  if
    it exists, even if CLOBBER is unset.
  ...
  >>| word
  >>! word
    Same  as  >>,  except  that  the  file is created if it does not
    exist, even if CLOBBER is unset.


> In fact it's simply a shortcut for "2>&1" (which means to dup
> descriptor 2 [=stderr] to desciptor 1 [=stdout]).


  - Parv

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