Korn Shell: Unix and Linux Programming Manual, Third Edition, The

Quoting

Each of the metacharacters listed above (See Definitions earlier in this appendix) has a special meaning to the Korn shell and causes termination of a word unless quoted. A character may be quoted (i.e., made to stand for itself) by preceding it with a \. The pair \ new-line is ignored. All characters enclosed between a pair of single quote marks (''), are quoted. A single quote cannot appear within single quotes. Inside double quote marks (""), parameter and command substitution occurs and \ quotes the characters \, `, " , and $. The meaning of $* and $@ is identical when not quoted or when used as a parameter assignment value or as a file name.

However, when used as a command argument, "$*" is equivalent to "$1d$2d..." , where d is ...