Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> On Mon, 2024-09-09 at 22:32 -0400, Jon LaBadie wrote:
>> Double and single quotes seem equivalent here. But note that inside
>> single quotes the backslash is always literal, not special, while inside
>> double quotes it depends on the character following the backslash. If
>> it is a dollar sign ($), a back tic (`), a backslash (\), or a double
>> quote (") then the backslash quotes the following character.
>
> Many decades of Shell usage and I still have trouble remembering the
> difference between single and double quotes.Not specifically for you Patrick, but as a general reply to that statement... (I'm closer to that position than I am to being an expert in the many, subtle differences, I'm sure.) A very basic (and very incomplete) way to think about it is that single quotes protect the contents from (nearly) all shell expansions (i.e. things which change the content or meaning of the quoted material). Double quotes allow the shell to expand things before passing them to the command being run. The rules are much more convoluted than that, of course. Largely, that's by virtue of them being codified by what shells have actually done rather than being designed entirely up front before being implemented. But asking "do I want this data to be fed as-is to the command being run or expanded by the shell?" usually makes the choice clear. I tend to default to single quotes and only change things to double quotes when necessary By the time you have case where it's not clear, you know that you're deep in the weeds and likely have looked up the differences for your use-case (or figured them out through trial and error). -- Todd
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