Question

What Shell character do you use around a string to ignore every special character in the string?

a) `*`
b) `'`
c) `!`
d) `?`

Answer 1

To ignore special characters in a string in shell programming, single quotes ' should be used. This prevents the shell from interpreting special characters and treats them as literals.

Step-by-step explanation:

In shell programming, to ignore every special character in a string, you should enclose the string in single quotes '.' (option b). When you place text inside single quotes, the shell interprets the text literally, and all special characters within the quotes lose their special meaning and are treated as ordinary characters.

This means that every special character loses its inherent significance and is treated as an ordinary character.

For example, to assign the value $HOME*&?'s to a variable without it being parsed for variable expansion or pattern matching, you would write: var='$HOME*&?'s'.

This practice ensures that the string retains its original form without undergoing interpretation, offering precise control over how special characters are handled within shell scripts.