How to use uname -r

Question

Some instructions say to put 'uname -r' into terminal commands. Is this supposed to be automatically converted by the system to something else? It doesn't get converted to anything on my system. uname -r only works by itself but not as a program argument.

Answer 1

Probably, it says:

`uname -r`

Make sure you use the right quotes. A trivial example is:

echo `uname -r`

Of course, this is just equivalent to:

uname -r

The backquotes capture the output of the command as a string. Generally the equivalent:

echo $(uname -r)

is considered clearer. It nests correctly, and it's harder to misinterpret.