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Special Characters

There are several special characters in BASH that have a non-literal meaning. When we use these characters, BASH evaluates these characters and their meaning, but usually does not pass them on to the underlying commands. These are also called metacharacters.

Here are a few of those special characters, and what they do:

Some examples:

    $ echo "I am $LOGNAME"
    I am lhunath
    $ echo 'I am $LOGNAME'
    I am $LOGNAME
    $ # boo
    $ echo An open\ \ \ space
    An open   space
    $ echo "My computer is $(hostname)"
    My computer is Lyndir
    $ echo boo > file
    $ echo $(( 5 + 5 ))
    10
    $ (( 5 > 0 )) && echo "Five is bigger than zero."
    Five is bigger than zero.




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