Once upon a time, Les Mikesell lesmikesell@gmail.com said:
I think that is still an oversimplification because more than expansion is involved and the order related to other steps. When does it do i/o redirection; which things happen before/during starting subshells/pipes; what if you use 'eval', etc.?
Try this: "An Introduction to the UNIX Shell" (by the person who wrote the Bourne shell, on which bash is based):
http://people.fas.harvard.edu/~lib113/reference/unix/bourne_shell.pdf
Or, the current version of the standard specification of the POSIX shell, which bash implements:
http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/V3_chap02.html