How to quote

(skip this if you are used to ' and ")

POSIX sh and derivates (about all of them (but hey! rc's great!)) may be tricky with quoting.

The double quotes (") have the most complex syntax:
- \n get converted to n
- \\ get converted to \
- $(command) and `command` get converted to the result of command
- $var get converted to the value of var

So if we want exactly "$( to be printed, with double quotes, the whole thing would be:


This is cumbersome in some cases, and very useful in other cases.

The single quotes (') are the strongests: nothing can escape the quotes!


These are convenient for printf format strings (as above), sed or awk scripts... in which we want the \n not to be transformed into n by the shell, but interpreted by printf, awk...