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Appendix \- Special characters
The following table lists the special characters of
and the \s-2UNIX\s0 system, giving for each the section(s) in which it
A number of these characters also have special meaning in expressions.
; 2.4 separates commands to be executed sequentially
| 1.5 separates commands in a pipeline
( ) 2.2,3.6 brackets expressions and variable values
& 2.5 follows commands to be executed without waiting for completion
/ 1.6 separates components of a file's pathname
\. 1.6 separates root parts of a file name from extensions
? 1.6 expansion character matching any single character
* 1.6 expansion character matching any sequence of characters
[ ] 1.6 expansion sequence matching any single character from a set
~ 1.6 used at the beginning of a filename to indicate home directories
{ } 4.2 used to specify groups of arguments with common parts
\e 1.7 prevents meta-meaning of following single character
\' 1.7 prevents meta-meaning of a group of characters
" 4.3 like \', but allows variable and command expansion
Input/output metacharacters
< 1.5 indicates redirected input
> 1.3 indicates redirected output
Expansion/substitution metacharacters
$ 3.4 indicates variable substitution
! 2.3 indicates history substitution
: 3.6 precedes substitution modifiers
^ 2.3 used in special forms of history substitution
\` 4.3 indicates command substitution
# 1.3,3.6 begins scratch file names; indicates shell comments
\- 1.2 prefixes option (flag) arguments to commands
% 2.6 prefixes job name specifications
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