> you said "There isn't and shouldn't be any hard fast rule for this" No I did not. You're confused as that was someone else. :-) Do not needlessly escape. O

> you said "There isn't and shouldn't be any hard fast rule for this" No I did not. You're confused as that was someone else. :-) Do not needlessly escape. Only escape what that flavour of syntax needs you to do. What you may think is a needless escape may actually give different behaviour. $ sed 's/[x\.]/y/g' <<<'x.\z' yyyz