> If unquoted, most shells will search for a file with that name before
> giving up and using the parameter as a string.
You're probably being confused by glob-failure behaviour, which has
nothing to do with this case (in this case, "cat isn't echo", and in
fact echo 1 or echo "1" will do the same thing.)
If instead you were using ? as the string:
$ echo ?
p z
$ echo "?"
?
because ? is a glob, 1 isn't. I ran those in a directory with two
files named "p" and "z". If I cd somewhere without one-char filenames:
$ echo ?
?
_Mark_ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Herd of Kittens
Debian Package Maintainer
