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From https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/378549/674

tmp=${string//"$separator"/$'\2'}

What does $ in $'\2' mean?

Is $'\2' a parameter expansion?

Thanks.

Tim
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1 Answers1

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This is ANSI-C Quoting:

Words of the form $'string' are treated specially. The word expands to string, with backslash-escaped characters replaced as specified by the ANSI C standard.

$'\2' is expanded to the eight-bit character whose value is the octal value 2. In the answer you refer to, this character is used as a field separator.

Stephen Kitt
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  • Thanks. In C language, how is $\2 specified instead? – Tim Aug 01 '17 at 14:24
  • $ introduces the string in Bash, it has no special meaning in C; if you wanted to store the string $\2 in C, you’d just escape the backslash, $\\2. – Stephen Kitt Aug 01 '17 at 14:28
  • Thanks. In C, how is the octal value 2 specified? Is it 0x2? Is there a similar metacharacter in C to $ in Bash? – Tim Aug 01 '17 at 14:30
  • In C, in a numeric context you just use a leading 0 for an octal value, so 010 is 8; in a string context with a backslash, values are treated as octal anyway. There’s no need for a $-style metacharacter, backslashes are interpreted in this way in all C strings: you’d just write "\2". – Stephen Kitt Aug 01 '17 at 14:42