Can't use exclamation mark (!) in bash?

Question

I'm trying to use the curl command to access a http url with a exclamation mark (!) in its path. e.g:

curl -v "http://example.org/!287s87asdjh2/somepath/someresource"

the console replies with bash: ... event not found.

What is going on here? and what would be the proper syntax to escape the exclamation mark?

Answer 1

The exclamation mark is part of history expansion in bash. To use it you need it enclosed in single quotes (eg: 'http://example.org/!132') or to directly escape it with a backslash (\) before the character (eg: "http://example.org/\!132").

Answer 2

As well as the answer given by Daniel, you can also simply turn off history expansion altogether if you don't use it with set +H.

Answer 3

I would personally do single quotes, but for completeness, I will also note since it is a URL, you can encode the ! as %21, e.g. curl -v http://example.org/%21132 .