Re: Escaping the history expansion character

[Matthew Walker]

Matthew Walker wrote:
>  From the bash info page:
>   Only `\' and `'' may be used to escape the history expansion
>   character.
>
> I have tried the following:
>   echo '!'   # works fine, displays "!"
>   echo "!"   # errors as expected with "event not found"
>   echo "\!"  # produces "\!" --- this is my problem
>
> Why is it that "\!" doesn't output just "!"?
>
> For every other scenario "\x" produces "x".  Why does this fail for an 
> exclamation mark?
>
> This time I remembered to check the FAQ, so hopefully this isn't a 
> stupid question :o)
>
> Matthew

I should have also said that "bash --version" gives me "GNU bash, 
version 3.00.0(1)-release (i686-pc-linux-gnu)" and that I'd like to know 
how to work around this problem---how do I get an exclamation mark 
within double quotes?

I upgraded to bash version 3 in the hope that this issue might have been 
resolved.  Originally I was working with 2.04(b).

Matthew