Jim and hergp: I take the point about the 32/64 bit issue (maxima: 2147483648/9223372036854775807); thanks for the information. It's just that my script - using bash - was failing on the 5.9 and...
I believe that introducing the ">" won't solve the problem. Funnily enough, the construct works with bash under SunOS 5.10. I'm merely interested whether anyone else encountered the problem.
I am using SunOS 5.9 and have the following outcome when using the sh and bash shells; has anyone else had this:
(tests behave differently)
bash-2.05$ ksh
$ if echo $SHELL; uname -a;[ ...