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

[ti@lemonia.org]

> 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.
>
> 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.

If only there were a more powerful scripting language, that was more
reliably compatible between different platforms...