this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2025
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Which command substitution do you prefer in shell scripts: backquotes `` or $() syntax? (ani.social)
submitted 1 week ago by kiri@ani.social to c/linux@programming.dev
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Looks like $(...) is better, but I still pretty often see `...` in some articles.

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[–] excess0680@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

By some sheer coincidence, I searched this topic today. I’ve been a consistent user of the parenthesis expansion, but never thought of why I preferred one or the other.

I suppose the primary advantage is that $() will expand in a consistent way. You can even nest quotes and more expansions in one, while you’d struggle the same with backtick notation.

So I’ll just keep using parentheses.