pipe to sudo -E bash -
It's a short way of executing a script without having to save the file and then execute it. When you save the file and then execute it, a number of things can go wrong:
- User didn't type the filename correctly
- User didn't use the correct shell (maybe ran
sh foo.sh
instead ofbash foo.sh
) - User tried to execute the file instead of setting bash on it (
./foo.sh
), and forgot to set execute permissions - User forgot to use
sudo
By providing a single command line to execute, the developers can decrease the number of places where things can go wrong due to luser error.
Personally, I despise piping curl to bash. It's not safe.
This command would download file and attempt to execute it with root privileges.