How to Escape a character in a Bash command String

Created: 17th Aug 23 3 Views

Review needed

Verified

If you try to echo a String as a Bash command or a Script that has a special character such as an exclamation mark, you will see that it will not work as intended or you get an error.

Example:

bash-3.2$ echo Hello World!
bash: !": event not found

Below is an extensive table that enlists the special characters and how to escape them with Bash String or Script.

Special Character	Meaning	How to Escape
`"`	Double quote	`\"`
`'`	Single quote	`\'`
`$`	Dollar sign	`\$`
`&`	Ampersand	`\&`
`(`	Left parenthesis	`$ or $`
`)`	Right parenthesis	`$ or $`
`{`	Left curly brace	`\{`
`}`	Right curly brace	`\}`
`[`	Left square bracket	`\[`
`]`	Right square bracket	`\]`
`!`	Exclamation mark	`\!`
`*`	Asterisk (wildcard)	`\*`
`?`	Question mark (wildcard)	`\?`
`\`	Backslash	`\\`
`>`	Greater than sign (output redirection)	`\>`
`<`	Less than sign (input redirection)	`\<`
`;`	Semicolon (command separator)	`\;`

Now let's make our "Hello World!" string work.

$ echo Hello World \!
Hello World

Example:

# echo <
bash: syntax error near unexpected token `newline'

Fix:

# echo \<
<

How to escape special characters in bash

Comments & Discussion

Facing issues? Have questions? Post them here! We're happy to help!

Provide Feedback For This Article

We take your feedback seriously and use it to improve our content. Thank you for helping us serve you better!

Thanks for your feedback! If you have time, please provide details by selecting options below.

😊 Thanks for your time, your feedback has been registered!