Quoting
Quoting disables a character’s special meaning and allows it to be used literally, as itself. The following table displays characters that have special meaning to the Bash and Korn shells.
|
Character |
Meaning |
|
|
Command separator |
|
|
Background execution |
|
|
Command grouping |
|
|
Pipe |
|
|
Redirection symbols |
|
|
Filename metacharacters |
|
|
Used in quoting other characters |
|
|
Command substitution |
|
|
Variable substitution (or command or arithmetic substitution) |
|
|
Word separators |
These characters can be used for quoting:
-
" " Everything between
"and"is taken literally, except for the following characters that keep their special meaning:-
$ Variable (or command and arithmetic) substitution will occur.
-
' Command substitution will occur.
-
" This marks the end of the double quote.
-
-
' ' Everything between
'and'is taken literally except for another'. You cannot embed another'within such a quoted string.-
\ The character following a
\is taken literally. Use within" "to escape",$, and'. Often used to escape itself, spaces, or newlines.-
$" " Not ksh88. Just like
" ", except that locale translation is done.-
$' ' Not ksh88. Similar to
' ', but the quoted text is processed for the following escape sequences:
|
Sequence |
Value |
Sequence |
Value |
|
|
Alert |
|
Tab |
|
|
Backspace |
|
Vertical tab |
|
|
Control character X |
|
Octal value nnn |
|
|
Escape |
|
Hexadecimal value nn |
|
|
Escape ... |