On Sat, Jul 12, 2008 at 9:03 PM, Scott Robbins <scottro@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Sat, Jul 12, 2008 at 08:39:46PM -0700, Akemi Yagi wrote: >> They are "back ticks" :-) This is one of those things that might be >> regarded as Unix/Linux basics (?). It feeds the output of the command >> inside the ticks to the shell. In your case, `uname -m` produces i686 >> which then will be used as the parameter for the --target= option. > > This confuses many newcomers (and old timers with bad vision if they're > not paying attention.) > > Is there any merit to substituting that with $(). (To the OP, original > poster, both the back ticks, to the left of the numeral 1 on a QWERTY > keyboard and putting something inside $(), e.g., $(uname -m) mean to > execute a command. > > I write many pages for the beginner. As that was a common error when > people would read my pages, I then began making a point of explaining > what they were. Finally, I decided that simply using $() was easier > than adding a sentence or two specifying that those were backticks. :) Scott, There is one (minor) problem with using the $() notation. That is, it does not work in *cough* csh. I said "minor" because (t)csh users are minority. Anyway, back ticks work regardless of the shell used. Akemi P.S. Please do not start the shell war (or c-shell bashing). OK, Evolution?
