[pastorjim2]

In doing some reading about characters in shell commands it says that you can use quotation characters to disable or modify a characters meaning--is that correct?<br>Question is why would you disable characters by quoting?<br>Why not just omit the character from the command line in the first place? or am I missing something?

[codejockey]

The intent is to allow you to process arguments (filenames, etc.) that may contain special characters that are otherwise significant to the shell (such as asterisk ('*') or ampersand ('&'), for example). Even embedded blanks (space characters) are problematic for the shell, since normally a blank separates arguments; if you wish to treat several consecutive words as a single argument, then quotes will allow you to do so.

Naturally, the story doesn't end there -- single quotes and double quotes are treated slightly differently by the shell, and sometimes those differences become significant. However, the principle is still the same: quotes "protect" special characters from being interpreted by the shell as they normally would.

Hope this helps.

[pastorjim2]

quotes "protect" special characters from being interpreted by the shell as they normally would.

<br>Thanks codejockey!! Now it makes sense to me. I appreciate your making it easier to understand. jim

[codejockey]

Glad I was able to help make sense of things.