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From: mlip@NADC.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.unix
Subject: That Crazy Caret
Message-ID: <13244@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 7-Sep-84 10:40:25 EDT
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.13244
Posted: Fri Sep  7 10:40:25 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 14-Sep-84 03:19:08 EDT
Lines: 33

[ What's up, Doc?]

I have found an interesting feature with Berkeley's 4.1 Bourne shell.
Valid command arguments that begin with '^' (the caret character)
evince strange behavior.  The output of such commands are first sent
to limbo, and then the shell strips the '^' from the argument and tries
to execute the argument.

Example:

            ls ^date

gives the date and nothing more.

Also:

            date ^pwd

shows the current directory and nothing more.

Try:

            fred ^any_valid_command


The shell behaves correctly when the caret is protected with
quotes.  Switching tty drivers does not solve the problem.
Is the caret an undocumented metacharacter or is this a side 
effect of Berkeley's "history" feature in the cshell?


Michael Lipczynski
mlip@nadc