18 Oct
2005
18 Oct
'05
1:18 p.m.
On Mon, 2005-10-17 at 19:51 -0400, Sam Drinkard wrote:
Cody,
<snip>
rather long, instead of using the "/" at the end and so forth, to make the line more easily readable, you can use the "" character that means a newline, ... <snip>
Not meaning to be overly pedantic, but "" does not mean newline. It "escapes" the special meanings of the character following it. So bash ignores the special meaning normally associated with the newline character during parsing of the line(s) and treats the two lines as a single line.
Special processing, similar in nature, can be applied for "$", quotes (single and double), etc. This allows, for example, easy construction of shells that construct other shells.
<snip>