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What is it saying in my terminal ? (thelemmy.club)
submitted 3 weeks ago by LoveEspresso@retrofed.com to c/explainlikeimfive@lemmy.world
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[-] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 6 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

$ indicates that the string following is an env variable, but you just have a closing quote, so bash is confused.

If you want the literal character $ in your command, you must escape it: \$

Edit: afaik my answer does not change based on the fact that this is fish instead of bash or zsh. The $ is outside of the single quotes, and is thus being interpreted as an env var anchor.

[-] SpikesOtherDog@ani.social 1 points 3 weeks ago

They are using fish, FYI. Not sure how much of a difference this makes.

[-] LoveEspresso@retrofed.com 0 points 3 weeks ago

The actual folder is 'folder'$'\003' .

[-] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 8 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

In that case, I think you want

rm -rf "'folder'\$'\\003'"

Note the double escape before 003, which will render to the character literal \

Alternatively, start typing

rm -rf \'fo

And then hit tab until fish autocompletes the directory you want to kill, and run it.

Side note: i would absolutely not tolerate directories named like that lol

[-] LoveEspresso@retrofed.com 2 points 3 weeks ago

Thanks for the tip.

[-] hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 3 weeks ago

Is this some school task...? Why is there a folder with such a name 😅

[-] LoveEspresso@retrofed.com 3 points 3 weeks ago

Apparently yes. I'm learning things on my own.

[-] LoveEspresso@retrofed.com 0 points 3 weeks ago

Fish is different ?

[-] Strider@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago

Of course. It could work totally different from bash.

To be fair I saw some cool fish stuff and thought about using it but when maintaining a few thousand servers with bash its not viable to load an alternative shell to all of them.

[-] jerkface@lemmy.ca 3 points 3 weeks ago

how did you decide which parts to quote..?

[-] LoveEspresso@retrofed.com 1 points 3 weeks ago

I simply copied down the commands in the lesson.

[-] jerkface@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 weeks ago

might have been clearer to just link to that

[-] hobata@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 weeks ago

fish expected a variable name after $

[-] ratajs 2 points 3 weeks ago

This syntax works for me on Bash and Zsh. Your shell might have a different way of writing escape sequences.

[-] LoveEspresso@retrofed.com 2 points 3 weeks ago

Bash and Zsh are identical ??

[-] ratajs 1 points 3 weeks ago

They are not identical, but more they are quite compatible, most of Bash syntax and built-in commands work on Zsh as well. From what I’ve heard, Fish differs from them a lot. I use primarily Zsh, but sometimes run Bash if I need it for something (before ** started working on Zsh, I used Bash globstar when I needed it, for example).

this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2026
-13 points (25.9% liked)

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