Question

What is the construct in bash called where you can take wrap a command that outputs to stdout, such that the output itself is treated like a stream? In case I’m not describing that so well, maybe an example will do best, and this is what I typically use it for: applying diff to output that does not come from a file, but from other commands, where

cmd 

is wrapped as

<(cmd)

By wrapping a command in such a manner, in the example below I determine that there a difference of one between the two commands that I am running, and then I am able to determine that one precise difference. What is the construct/technique of wrapping a command as <(cmd) called? Thanks

[builder@george v6.5 html]$ git status | egrep modified | awk '{print $3}' | wc -l
51
[builder@george v6.5 html]$ git status | egrep modified | awk '{print $3}' | xargs grep -l 'Ext\.define' | wc -l
50
[builder@george v6.5 html]$ diff <(git status | egrep modified | awk '{print $3}') <(git status | egrep modified | awk '{print $3}' | xargs grep -l 'Ext\.define')
39d38
< javascript/reports/report_initiator.js

ADDENDUM
The revised command using the advice for using git’s ls-file should be as follows (untested):

diff <(git ls-files -m) <(git ls-files -m | xargs grep -l 'Ext\.define')

Answer 1

It is called process substitution.