[solved] an undocumented linux command?!

Message

razamatan · Post by **razamatan** » Fri May 01, 2009 1:34 am

so it seems that i stumbled upon a 'quote' command that's very similar to echo, but more retarded than it. i'm running bash-3.2_p39 ...

here's an example session:

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mustafa<301 ~>$ quote
''
mustafa<302 ~>$ which quote
which: no quote in (/home/jin/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/opt/bin:/usr/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu/gcc-bin/4.1.2:/usr/games/bin)
mustafa<303 ~>$ apropos quote
MIME::QuotedPrint    (3pm)  - Encoding and decoding of quoted-printable strings
PerlIO::via::QuotedPrint (3pm)  - PerlIO layer for quoted-printable strings
mustafa<304 ~>$ quote this is weird
'this'
mustafa<305 ~>$ quote "this is weird"
'this is weird'
mustafa<306 ~>$ quote 'this is weird'
'this is weird'
mustafa<307 ~>$ quote 'word up'
'word up'
mustafa<308 ~>$ quote tis' weird
>^C 
mustafa<308 ~>$

i did a man bash and looked for quote as a possible builtin, but no go. i also tried googling, but it's incredibly hard to disambiguate keywords that would be appropriate for it.

anyone care to educate?

bunder · Post by **bunder** » Fri May 01, 2009 1:48 am

1) sounds like you aliased quote to echo?
2) bash stuff goes in P+P.

poly_poly-man · Post by **poly_poly-man** » Fri May 01, 2009 1:56 am

grep quote /etc/profile ~/.bash*

Bones McCracker · Post by **Bones McCracker** » Fri May 01, 2009 2:02 am

Not BASH. (Unless it's a plugin or something.)

It could be an alias.

Are you absolutely sure you're running BASH? Some other shells do have a 'quote' command that functions like 'echo'.

justinkb · Post by **justinkb** » Fri May 01, 2009 2:07 am

i have the same with bash-4 if i start a terminal... if i started bash from the same terminal and then try again, it gives me command not found. as does zsh.

Bones McCracker · Post by **Bones McCracker** » Fri May 01, 2009 2:09 am

Does not work here in BASH-4, nor in BASH-3.

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~ $ quote
bash: quote: command not found
~ $ sudo quote
Password: 
sudo: quote: command not found
~ $ equery list bash
[ Searching for package 'bash' in all categories among: ]
 * installed packages
[I--] [ ~] app-shells/bash-4.0_p17-r1 (0)

Alias is the best explanation I can come up with.

desultory · Post by **desultory** » Fri May 01, 2009 3:37 am

razamatan wrote:anyone care to educate?

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man 1p alias

bunder wrote:2) bash stuff goes in P+P.

Moved from Off the Wall to Portage & Programming.

tgR10 · Post by **tgR10** » Fri May 01, 2009 6:43 am

strange i got no alias for "quote" but same thing happen to me while im using it ..
never used "quote" before, never needed, just found out that thread so i decided to check

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~ [02:38:52] [pią maj 01] [$tgr@bitis-gabonica]  history: 1269
];-> quote ce
'ce'
 ~ [02:38:55] [pią maj 01] [$tgr@bitis-gabonica]  history: 1270
];-> echo $SHELL
/bin/bash
 ~ [02:38:59] [pią maj 01] [$tgr@bitis-gabonica]  history: 1271
];-> bash
 ~ [02:39:15] [pią maj 01] [$tgr@bitis-gabonica]  history: 1251
];-> quote ce
'ce'
 ~ [02:39:16] [pią maj 01] [$tgr@bitis-gabonica]  history: 1252
];-> grep quote /etc/profile  ~/.bash*
 ~ [02:39:42] [pią maj 01] [$tgr@bitis-gabonica]  history: 1253
];-> bash --version
GNU bash, version 4.0.17(2)-release (i686-pc-linux-gnu)

razamatan · Post by **razamatan** » Fri May 01, 2009 7:28 am

hmm... it's not an alias... i grep'd for quote in /etc/profile* and ~/.bash* and returned nothing...

def not an alias or function...

livibetter · Post by **livibetter** » Fri May 01, 2009 8:03 am

Run

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type quote

in bash to find out.

I don't have `quote`... wondering what it really is, too.

justinkb · Post by **justinkb** » Fri May 01, 2009 8:03 am

i grepped bash source code, didn't find any pointers there... except i figured out there is a 'dequote' too...

edit: FOUND IT...

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paul@yoga ~ $ grep dequote /usr/share/bash-completion/.pre
# This function shell-dequotes the argument
dequote()

Bones McCracker · Post by **Bones McCracker** » Fri May 01, 2009 5:47 pm

Give that man a stout!

razamatan · Post by **razamatan** » Tue Apr 06, 2010 7:03 am

truly... you'd think they'd namespace the functions...

stan666 · Post by **stan666** » Fri Apr 09, 2010 6:38 pm

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$ type quote
quote is a function.
quote () 
{ 
    echo \'${1//\'/\'\\\'\'}\'
}

But I have no idea where it is defined...

XQYZ · Post by **XQYZ** » Fri Apr 09, 2010 6:48 pm

stan666 wrote:But I have no idea where it is defined...

I have the same output here on bash 4.1.5.

via the declare command I've found out that these functions are defined after /etc/profile executed, so I'm really nor sure where the hell they could come from.

stan666 · Post by **stan666** » Fri Apr 09, 2010 7:22 pm

aha, here is that little bastard!

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$ grep quote /usr/share/bash-completion/.pre
# This function shell-quotes the argument
quote()

Mike Hunt · Post by **Mike Hunt** » Fri Apr 09, 2010 7:46 pm

Not sure.
On my unstable box it works, not on my stable box.

Both have quote() in /usr/share/bash-completion/.pre

And type quote returns the function on the unstable box, not on the stable one.

And neither box has quote aliased. So it can't be that.

Cool mystery, gotta dig deeper.