Sometimes I feel the urge to put some more expressiveness in my Git commit messages. Unfortunately, Bash does not seem to like this:
cd ~/git/wargames git commit -m "Frustrating <insert object of frustration here>!" Output:
-bash: !": event not found Escaping with a backslash helps, but this includes the backslash in the commit message.
How do I escape the exclamation mark in Bash correctly?
An exclamation mark is preserved literally when you include it in a single-quoted string.
Example:
git commit -m 'Frustrating <insert object of frustration here>!' 
psql -c "SELECT * FROM player WHERE name !~ '^admin'".Have a try with this one:
git commit -m "Frustrating <insert object of frustration here>"'!' If in the middle of string, then:
"hello"'!'"world" In addition to using single quotes for exclamations, in most shells you can also use a backslash \ to escape it. That is: git commit -m "Frustrating <insert object of frustration here>\!"
However, I personally recommend disabling Bash expansion in you shell by adding set +H or set +o histexpand to your .bashrc file.
If, like me, you never use BVash expansion in your shell, disabling it will allow you to use exclamation points in any double-quote string—not only during your commits, but for all Bash commands.
! in a double quoted string with ` while using grep` recently in Bash. It didn't work for me, and I've confirmed it failed for the same reason that it failed for the OP.
printf "Hello, World\!\n"' (it will output the literal '\!': 'Hello, World\!'). Whereas 'printf "Hello, World"'!'"\n"' will output 'Hello, World\!'. It was tried with Bash 5.0.17. Just 'printf "Hello, World!\n"' will result in 'bash: !\n: event not found'.