Supp - 3. Escaping and Special Characters

Escaping

Escaping is a method of quoting single characters. The escape (\) preceding a character tells the shell to interpret that character literally.

Warning

With certain commands and utilities, such as echo and sed, escaping a character may have the opposite effect - it can toggle on a special meaning for that character.

Special meanings of certain escaped characters

Character	Meaning
\n	newline
\r	return
\t	tab
\v	vertical tab
\b	backspace
\a	alert (beep or flash)
0xx	translates to the octal ASCII equivalent of 0nn, where nn is a string of digits

Special Characters

Special Characters

Character	Meaning
#	Comments. Lines beginning with a # (with the exception of #!) are comments and will not be executed.
;	Command separator [semicolon]. Permits putting two or more commands on the same line.
;;	Terminator in a case option [double semicolon].
"	"partial quoting [double quote]. "STRING" preserves (from interpretation) most of the special characters within STRING
'	full quoting[single quote] 'STRING' preserves all special characters within STRING. This is a stronger form of quoting than "STRING"
,	comma operator. The comma operator [1] links together a series of arithmetic operations. All are evaluated, but only the last one is returned.
,, ,	Lowercase conversion in parameter substitution
\	escape [backslash]. A quoting mechanism for single characters.
/	Filename path separator [forward slash]. Separates the components of a filename.This is also the division arithmetic operator.
`	command substitution. The command construct makes available the output of command for assignment to a variable. This is also known as backquotes or backticks.
:	null command [colon]. This is the shell equivalent of a "NOP" (no op, a do-nothing operation). It may be considered a synonym for the shell builtin true
!	reverse (or negate) the sense of a test or exit status [bang]. The ! operator inverts the exit status of the command to which it is applied
?	test operator. Within certain expressions, the ? indicates a test for a condition.
$	Variable substitution (contents of a variable).
${}	Parameter substitution
$?	Exit status variable
$$	process ID variable
()	command group
{}	Block of code [curly brackets]. Also referred to as an inline group, this construct, in effect, creates an anonymous function (a function without a name).
{} \;	pathname. Mostly used in find constructs. This is not a shell builtin.
>|	force redirection (even if the noclobber option is set). This will forcibly overwrite an existing file.
||	OR logical operator. In a test construct, the
&	Run job in background. A command followed by an & will run in the background.
&&	AND logical operator. In a test construct, the && operator causes a return of 0 (success) only if both the linked test conditions are true.
~+	current working directory. This corresponds to the $PWD internal variable.
~-	previous working directory. This corresponds to the $OLDPWD internal variable.
=~	regular expression match. This operator was introduced with version 3 of Bash.
^	beginning-of-line. In a regular expression, a "^" addresses the beginning of a line of text.
^, ^^	Uppercase conversion in parameter substitution