Using csh & tcsh

Special Characters

Several characters have special meaning to the shell.

Character(s)	Description
* ? [ ] ^ { } ˜	Filename pattern matching and expansion
$	Variable reference
|	Pipe
< >	Input and output redirection
! ^	History reference and quick substitution
&	Background execution
;	Command separator
SPACE	Argument separator
TAB	Filename completion (tcsh)
ESC	Filename completion (csh)
(…)	Subshell execution
'…'	Command substitution
\ ' "	Quote characters

Special Characters in Filenames

Filename arguments can contain the following special characters in order to do pattern matching or home-directory substitution.

Character(s)	Description
*	Match an arbitrary length sequence of characters
?	Match a single character
[…]	Match any character named between brackets
[^…]	Match any character not named between brackets (tcsh only)
^pattern	Match filenames not matching pattern (tcsh only)
{…}	String expansion operator
˜	Expands to pathname of your home directory
˜name	Expands to pathname of home directory for user name

Quote Characters

Quote characters turn off any special meaning a character has, allowing it be used as an ordinary character.

Character(s)	Description
\	Quote the following character.
'…'	Quote the characters between single quotes. !event is still evaluated as a history substitution.
"…"	Quote the characters between double quotes. !event, $var, and 'cmd' are still evaluated as history, variable, and command substitutions.