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It means "or". If the left hand side returns a non-zero error code, the right hand side is run. This is complementary to && "and" where the right hand side is run if the left hand side returns no error (error code 0).
In this case, if /usr/sbin/anacron is not executable, then run-parts --report /etc/cron.weekly is executed
two pipes, ||, is the almost universal logical OR operator.
literal: this or that
programming: this || that
that code snippet tests if /usr/sbin/anacron is an executable, and should that test fail (for any reason, the file not exist, or the file is not executable) "run-parts --report /etc/cron.weekly" is executed.
Because many programs set the return status to 0 if they are successful (a notable exception being grep), it's common to see something like this in a script:
Code:
some_command || exit 3
which would cause the script to exit with it's own non-zero status. in this case 3.
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