Harry Henry Gebel <hgebel@magpage.com> wrote: [inside single quotes] >The single quote retains it's special meaning because otherwise you >would have no way to stop typing the argument, the backslash retains >it's special meaning in case you have to insert a single quote >character into the argument. Actually, backslashes lose their special meaning inside single quotes in bash: [cjw44@riva ~]$ echo '\\\' \\\ -- Colin Watson [cjw44@flatline.org.uk]