In Bash, quoting refers to the process of enclosing command parameters within single quotes ' and double quotes " to influence the way commands are interpreted and executed by the shell.

On the other hand, escaping refers to the process of selectively preventing shell expansions using the backslash character \.

Defining multi-words command parameters

By default, the shell uses whitespace characters, such as spaces, tabs, and newlines as delimiters to break down commands into distinct elements.

For example, the shell will break down this expression into 1 command and 2 parameters:

$ echo Hello World

Where:

• echo is the command.

• Hello and World are the parameters.

To force the shell to treat the string "Hello World" as a single parameter instead of two, you can wrap this expression into single quotes:

$ echo 'Hello World'Hello World