Bash bashing escaped newlines (Was: LOL++ (Re: OT: It's arrived!))

[Andy Wardley]

Andy Wardley wrote:
> What am I missing?

Works here (OSX/bash 2.05):

   [abw at shiny] bash --version
   GNU bash, version 2.05b.0(1)-release (powerpc-apple-darwin8.0)
   Copyright (C) 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

And here (FreeBSD/bash 2.05)

   [abw at cat ~] bash --version
   bash --version
   GNU bash, version 2.05a.0(1)-release (i386-portbld-freebsd4.6)
   Copyright 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

And here (Ubuntu/bash 3.2.25):

   abw at blackbox:~$ bash --version
   GNU bash, version 3.2.25(1)-release (i486-pc-linux-gnu)
   Copyright (C) 2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

But not here (Debian/bash 3.1.7):

   abw at svr15:~$ bash --version
   GNU bash, version 3.1.17(1)-release (i486-pc-linux-gnu)
   Copyright (C) 2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

   abw at svr15:~$ perl -MHTML::Element \
   > -e "print HTML::Element->new('aol')->push_content('Me Too!')->as_HTML"
   -bash: !': event not found

How strange.

A