Home/ Questions/Q 8326699
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-06-09T00:51:05+00:00

Please observe the following: [user@machine deploy]$ echo ? ? [user@machine deploy]$ echo ?? ??

  • 0

Please observe the following:

[user@machine deploy]$ echo ?
?
[user@machine deploy]$ echo ??
??
[user@machine deploy]$ echo ???
lib
[user@machine deploy]$ echo ????
????

What is up with echo ???? Why is that “lib”?

I am not seeing anything in my env or .bashrc, and it is not consistent between machines (on my dev machine, the string ??? stayed ???, which was useful where I was testing for it).

I can work around this no problems- the “???” as a placeholder value was completely arbitrary. But now I am curious. Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks.

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    In shell globs, ? stands for one character (exactly – one and only one). So if you have a file (or directory) that has a name with exactly three chars, ??? will match it.

    Try touch a; touch bb ; echo ? ??.

    If you don’t have a file that matches the pattern, the pattern is printed as is, with not replacement.

    • 0