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Quotes

If a user wishes to input an argument that contains a blank, comma, comment character, special delimiter, etc., then the argument should begin with the begin quote (") character, and have an end quote (") character at the end. Reaching the end of the input line is equivalent to having the end quote character. If you want to have the string include the end quote character, then you should double the character (similar to the way that FORTRAN handles character strings with embedded single quotes). By default, the begin quote and end quote characters are the same (the ASCII double-quote: " ). For example:

"This argument contains blanks"
"This argument ends with a single """," followed by a 2nd argument"
"The initial "" allow the words following the ! to be read"
" A final "" is optional for the last argument



Keith Arnaud (kaa@genji.gsfc.nasa.gov)
Wed May 28 10:59:33 EDT 1997