redline a b cThat simple example makes it trivially easy to understand. I remember trying to figure that out previously via the manual and I just got more confused. There's no merit to obfuscation tho you'd not know that reading some Linux/Unix man pages. It's a critical lesson: what you see is not what you get, you hafta understand the hidden structure of your data.would mean echo -e "$red$1 $2 $3$nrm" One word, with two quoted spaces, instead of three words.