AI engineering glossary · Command line Git
What is quoting?
Quoting (also called Escaping): Wrapping text in single or double quotes, or escaping it with a backslash, so the shell treats special characters as plain text. Single quotes keep everything literal; double quotes still allow variable expansion. It is essential for file names containing spaces.
Quoting: an example
cp 'my notes.txt' backup/ works, while cp my notes.txt backup/ fails because the shell sees two separate file names.
Related terms
More Command line Git terms
Where you learn it
Quoting is part of the AI Engineering Program, which teaches it with notes, a hands-on lab and an exam. The first lesson is free.