In bash, how do I escape an exclamation mark?

Question

I want to do something like bzr commit -m "It works!". I can sort of escape the exclamation mark by doing bzr commit -m "It works\!". However, then my commit message includes the backslash. How do I escape the exclamation mark, while still ignoring the backslash?

Answer 1

Since you do not depend on bash to expand variables in your commit message you could use single quotes instead. Strings in single quotes are not expanded by bash.

bzr commit -m 'This does work!' 

Answer 2

Old question I know, but for future searchers:

You can also use this method if you want double quotes as well as the exclamation:

echo "It's broken"'!'

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Note to user N13, before you edit my answer again: This works even if the ! is not at the end of the line, thanks to the single-quotes.

Eg, this works:

echo "hello there"'!'" and goodbye"

Answer 3

Turn off history expansion

set +H

or

set +o histexpand

Answer 4

Use single quotes (') instead of double quotes ("). Single quotes turn off all interpretation of the stuff in them, while double quotes only turn off some.

bzr commit -m 'It works!'

Answer 5

I just now found another way, that will at least work with echo'ing strings (sentences) you want to punctuate with an exclamation point. It does an end-run, more or less, around BASH histexpand and takes only a bit longer to code.

The hex for an exclamation point, as listed here http://www.ascii-code.com/ , is 21, so if you put \x21 at the end of your string, "echo -e $foo", make $foo its own expanded echo [ie, foo=$(echo -e "$foo") ], what you get when you echo $foo again is the string with an ! at the end. And no switching histexpand either.

Works for sure in BASH 4+. Earlier versions, ymmv.

BZT