The characters , |, and & are four examples of special characters that have particular meanings to the shell. The wildcards we saw earlier in this chapter (*, ?, and […]) are also special characters.

What are special characters in a shell?

Special characters. Some characters are evaluated by Bash to have a non-literal meaning. Instead, these characters carry out a special instruction, or have an alternate meaning; they are called “special characters”, or “meta-characters”.

What are characters in Linux?

What Are Special Characters? There are a set of characters the Bash shell treats in two different ways. When you type them at the shell, they act as instructions or commands and tell the shell to perform a certain function. Think of them as single-character commands.