RE: why does command echo \\\foobar print \\foobar

[Paul Smith]

On Sun, 2010-02-07 at 06:24 -0800, Mark Galeck (CW) wrote:
> OK, let me make sure I am not confused:
> 
> Are you saying that on Unix:
> 
> >echo \\\foobar
> \foobar
> 
> And that is why you expected that?  

Yes.  Well, to be precise I expected it because I know how backslash
escaping works in the shell.

Without any quoting, the first backslash escapes the second backslash,
giving a single backslash, and the third backslash escapes the "f".
Since an escaped character is just that character, "\f" is just "f", and
the expected result is "\foobar".

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