jerry@oliveb.UUCP (Jerry Aguirre) (05/08/84)
The csh adds a history mechanism which enables the user to edit and repeat commands with out retyping them. The default meta character used to access the history mechanism is the exclamation mark (!). The choice of this character has been criticized (have to escape uucp addresses) but that what it is. It gets more interesting in that quotes do not disable the history metacharacter as double quotes disable *globing and single quotes disable $variables. The only way to type it is to escape it with a backslash. Thus to mail to you I would have to type: mail ...sdcsvax\!noscvax\!sloane (I hope the backslash ! makes it thru the mail.) I think single quoting should have disabled the ! but that's not the way they did it. For your example use: %echo "Don't do that\!" So it's not a bug, it's a feature! Jerry Aguirre {hplabs|fortune|ios|tolerant|allegra|tymix}!oliveb!jerry