title: 'End' command in shell script
body: <p>I am trying to understand part of a shell script that appears to be very confusing for me.</p>
  
  <p>This is the snippet. My questions are:</p>
  
  <p>a) what does <code>&lt;&lt;-</code> do? Is it like a standard expression . I am only aware of <code>&gt;</code> , <code>&gt;&gt;</code> and <code>&lt;</code> for redirection.</p>
  
  <p>b) What could <code>End</code> mean? I am assuming that all the values from 'n' till 'somefilename.dat.summary' is some sort of input that is send to the script 'collapse4' and it's output is redirected to /dev/null which i learned is a place where we send unwanted data.</p>
  
  <pre><code>/usr/can/bin/collapse4&lt;&lt;-End &gt; /dev/null
  n
  n
  1
  9 14
  y
  1
  26
  8
  30
  8
  1
  23
  3
  1
  n
  n
  y
  n
  n
  somefilename.dat
  somefilename.dat.summary
  End
  </code></pre>