Linked Questions
12 questions linked to/from Why do Unix man pages use double backticks in place of double quotes?
8
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2
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Man page quotation characters [duplicate]
I've just been looking through a few man pages for a few different commands including grep and ifconfig.
I've noticed over a few pages, the content uses a strange syntax to notate what i think are ...
- 223
0
votes
3
answers
483
views
Is it normal to use the grave (`) symbol, followed by an apostraphe (') to quote? [duplicate]
For example, 'foo bar' would be quoted as `foo bar', or ``foo bar''. Is it encouraged or general practice to use this quoting syntax? It seems to be quite common in some documentation.
1
vote
1
answer
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Manual pages uses the quotation : `<character/string>' (quoting string inside grave accent and apostrophe) [duplicate]
I've found that many manpages uses the quotation : `c/s' i.e quoting character or sting inside grave accent(`) & apostophe(').
Example visit manpage of bash, find etc. and you'll find the ...
- 23.7k
3
votes
0
answers
143
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Why some strings are quoted with double backticks and double single quotes in man pages? [duplicate]
For example, in the yes man page:
yes outputs expletive, or, by default, ``y''
Why is "y" quoted this way?
- 1,838
1
vote
0
answers
137
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Where does backtick and single quote come from when denoting commands e.g. `prog'? [duplicate]
When referring to commands in tutorials, man pages, and articles I see authors use the backtick and single quote in this way:
`./configure'
`make'
I believe I have seen gcc denote points of failure ...
- 253
0
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0
answers
48
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Why Linux uses `blah' to quote strings by convention? [duplicate]
While I was reading the document of some Linux utilities, I found that they always quote strings using ` and '. For example, below is an excerpt from the man page of the find utility.
-exec ...
- 935
0
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0
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Why does this error message open with a ` char, but close with a ' char? [duplicate]
GNU bash, version 3.2.57(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin21)
In a new bash shell, I tried to declare a function but saw the following error:
syntax error near unexpected token `str'
I'm curious why ...
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9
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3
answers
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batch convert mp3 files to wav using sox
for a single .mp3, I can convert it to wav using
sox ./input/filename.mp3 ./output/filename.wav
I tried:
#!/bin/bash
for i in $(ls *mp3)
do
sox -t wav $i waves/$(basename $i)
done
But it ...
- 259
5
votes
3
answers
539
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Quoting commands
As I've learned to use Linux over the years, I've repeatedly come across the idiom of quoting commands with a leading backtick (`) and a following single quote ('), like so:
`rm -rf /tmp/foo/bar'
(I ...
- 265
14
votes
1
answer
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Why bash encapsulates syntax error both with grave accent and with an apostrophe?
When bash is reporting a syntax error, it encapsulates the text which has raised the syntax error both with grave accent and with an apostrophe, like this: `...'. Any idea why?
Here's an example:
$ ...
- 827
1
vote
3
answers
607
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How can 'man' render double quotes not as doubled backtick and prime characters?
When I do a command such as:
man bash
I see quotes shown as:
``...''
There have been posts about why this happens:
Man page quotation characters
Why some strings are quoted with double backticks ...
- 201
4
votes
1
answer
154
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Why do shells use a backtick for an opening quote in much of their output?
$ type -a short_command
short_command is aliased to `some_long_and_obnoxious_command_that_I_never_want_to_type'
Why does Bash (and perhaps every other shell) frequently—as above—use a ...
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