In a Bash case statement, what is the effect of the ;;& operator?

• A. It causes the shell to evaluate the next pattern's commands as well, instead of exiting the case.
• B. It exits the case statement immediately.
• C. It acts as a no-op and does nothing.
• D. It requires a regex to match patterns.

Answer: (A)

The operator ;;& changes how a case statement flows. Normally, once a matching pattern runs its commands, the case statement ends at the next clause because of the typical terminator. With ;;&, after finishing the current pattern’s commands, the shell does not stop. It tests the next pattern against the same input and, if that next pattern matches, executes its commands as well. This lets multiple patterns be executed in sequence for the same input, effectively cascading matches.

For example, if the input could satisfy overlapping patterns, using ;;& would run all the matching blocks rather than stopping after the first one. This is different from the usual behavior where ending a pattern with a simple terminator stops the case entirely.

The other options don’t fit: exiting immediately is what happens without ;;&, a no-op would not trigger additional pattern evaluation, and the operator doesn’t require a regex—case patterns can be glob-like patterns, not just regex.