Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide: Prev Next What makes a character special ? If it has a meaning beyond its literal meaning , a meta-meaning , then we refer to it as a special character . Along with commands and keywords , special characters are building blocks of Bash scripts. Special Characters Found In Scripts and Elsewhere # Comments. Lines beginning with a # (with the exception of #! ) are comments and will not be executed. # This line is a comment. Comments may also occur following the end of a command. echo "A comment will follow." # Comment here. # ^ Note whitespace before # Comments may also follow whitespace at the beginning of a line. # A tab precedes this comment. Comments may even be embedded within a pipe . initial=( `cat "$startfile" | sed -e '/#/d' | tr -d '\n' |\ # Delete lines con...