Shell metacharacters [LWN.net]

Shell metacharacters

Posted Jan 27, 2011 23:06 UTC (Thu) by cmccabe (guest, #60281)
In reply to: Shell metacharacters by cesarb
Parent article: Domsch: Consistent Network Device Naming coming to Fedora 15

> One thing I do not like in this... Why use a shell metacharacter? Isn't
> it asking for trouble?

Matt Domsch wrote:

> Yes. We did uncover one or two trivial-to-fix bugs in the Fedora
> initscripts due to this, but that was to be expected. There are no other
> ASCII characters that don't already have several meanings that would make
> for a better separator. In configuration files, the # is usually only
> special at the beginning of a line, not as part of another word, and they
> can always be quoted if necessary.

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Shell metacharacters

Posted Jan 31, 2011 5:39 UTC (Mon) by mab (subscriber, #314) [Link]

Why is there a need for a separator at all?