Today, I ran this:

git commit -m "TICKETNAME Export of X generated with `name-of-some-utility`"

Commit message on gitlab was

"TICKETNAME Export of X generated with (Starting the export of data, wait till it downloads...)"

Clear but fascinating way it can break.

Do I want to get a clear picture of all the various levels of escaping, including globs, backticks, backslashes etc. happening in the shell?

Why doesn’t the # in git commit -m "Ticket #1231" result in a string with the 1234 commented out and a syntax error? I know it doesn’t but I wouldn’t be able to predict that behaviour without this knowledge. Would single quotes change much? How to actually comment the rest of the line this way?

What are the rules that decide whether a * gets expanded by the shell or passed to, say, scp as-is? Etc. etc. etc.

It’s all knowable and learnable, but I was never sure whether the ROI was worth it for me. Till now trial and error always worked in the rare instances I have to do something complex with bash scripts, but this is the first time it bites me in real life in an unexpected way.