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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.

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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