Quoting

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Your bash shell understand special characters with special meanings. For example, $var is used to display the variable value. Bash expands variables and wildcards, for example:

echo $PATH
echo $PS1
echo /etc/*.conf

However, sometime you do not wish to use variables or wildcards. For example, do not print value of $PATH, but just print $PATH on screen as a word. You can enable or disable the meaning of a special character by enclosing them into a single or double quotes. This is also useful to suppress warnings and error messages while writing the shell scripts.

echo "Path is $PATH"

OR

echo 'I want to print $PATH'

Quoting

There are three types of quotes

Quote type	Name	Meaning	Example (type at shell prompt)
"	The double quote	The double quote ( "quote" ) protects everything enclosed between two double quote marks except $, ', " and \.Use the double quotes when you want only variables and command substitution. * Variable - Yes * Wildcards - No * Command substitution - yes	The double quotes allowes to print the value of $SHELL variable, disables the meaning of wildcards, and finally allows command substitution. echo "$SHELL" echo "/etc/*.conf" echo "Today is $(date)"
'	The single quote	The single quote ( 'quote' ) protects everything enclosed between two single quote marks. It is used to turn off the special meaning of all characters. * Variable - No * Wildcards - No * Command substitution - No	The single quotes prevents displaying variable $SHELL value, disabled the meaning of wildcards /etc/*.conf, and finally command substitution ($date) itself. echo '$SHELL' echo '/etc/*.conf' echo 'Today is $(date)'
\	The Backslash	Use backslahs to change the special meaning of the characters or to escape special characters within the text such as quotation marks.	You can use \ before dollar sign is used to told to have no special meaning. Disable the meaning of the next character in $PATH (i.e. do not display value of $PATH variable): echo "Path is \$PATH" echo "Path is $PATH"

Backslash

The backslash ( \ ) alters the special meaning of the ' and " i.e. it will escape or cancel the special meaning of the next character. The following will display filename in double quote:

FILE="/etc/resolv.conf"
echo "File is \"$FILE\" "

Sample Outputs:

File is "/etc/resolv.conf"

The following will remove the special meaning of the dollar ( $ ) sign:

FILE="/etc/resolv.conf"
echo "File is \$FILE "

Sample Outputs:

File is $FILE 

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