I should mention that you can use this with file names containing spaces:
touch this\ is\ a\ test
creates an empty file called "this is a test" there are three spaces and
there are three '\' to escape them.
In the example: he*llo you replace '*' with '\*'
In the above example a ' ' is replaced with '\ '
You can see the shell do this automatically if after you created the file
"this is a test" you list it with ls using autocompletion with the TAB key:
ls this[TAB]
Assuming you don't have any other files in the directory beginning with
"this" you will see:
ls this\ is\ a\ test
