On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 3:51 PM, Chris. Aubrey-Smith <cas194@???> wrote:
> chris@T42:~$ echo "Don't do that!"     >  bash: !": event not found
>
> Why is the ' in Don't protected by ", while ! is not? Or am I missing
> something?
You're missing the awesome powerfulness of bash HISTORY EXPANSION.
! Start  a  history  substitution,  except  when followed by a blank,
newline, carriage return, = or ( (when the extglob shell option is
enabled using the shopt builtin)
There's a whole section on it in man bash
-- 
Richard Brown