Forward slash vs backward slash for file path in git bash

Question

I am running these two commands in Git bash.

Why they behave differently? Aren\'t they supposed to do the same thing or am I missing something?

Answer 1

Bash treats backslash as an escape character, meaning that the symbol following it is interpreted literally, and the backslash itself is dropped.

$ echo $HOME
/home/user
$ echo \$HOME
$HOME

Under Windows, where backslash serves as a path separator, this causes some inconvenience. Fortunately, inside single quotes a backslash character loses its special meaning and is treated literally (as any other character, except a single quote):

$ echo '\$HOME'
\$HOME

Therefore, if you are going to copy&paste a Windows path into Git bash, put it inside single quotes:

git diff > 'D:\Patches\afterWGComment.txt'