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Joachim Ansorg edited this page Nov 12, 2021 · 5 revisions

For command expansion, the tick should slant left (` vs ´).

Problematic code:

echo "Your username is ´whoami´"

Correct code:

echo "Your username is $(whoami)" # Preferred
echo "Your username is `whoami`"  # Deprecated, will give [SC2006]

Rationale:

In some fonts it's hard to tell ticks apart, but Bash strongly distinguishes between backticks (grave accent `), forward ticks (acute accent ´) and regular ticks (apostrophe ').

Backticks start command expansions, while forward ticks are literal. To help spot bugs, ShellCheck parses backticks and forward ticks interchangeably.

Exceptions

If you want to write out literal forward ticks, such as fancyful ascii quotation marks:

echo "``Proprietary software is an injustice.´´  - Richard Stallman"

use single quotes instead:

echo '``Proprietary software is an injustice.´´  - Richard Stallman'

To nest forward ticks in command expansion, use $(..) instead of `..`.

ShellCheck

Each individual ShellCheck warning has its own wiki page like SC1000. Use GitHub Wiki's "Pages" feature above to find a specific one, or see Checks.

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