> No where do I see mention of ! being expanded in quotes.  Since other
> shells don't do this, I would think the path of least surprise is to
> change bash to not do it either.

Actually it is not true that other shells don't expand ! in quotes.

The test case given so far (echo "ouch!") is bogus.

Try echo "ouch!1" in csh or tcsh and watch it expand.

The issue is not whether expansion is done, but how the shell reacts when
it fails. csh/tcsh just pretend the history reference had been escaped (the
old sh globber does something similar for 'echo *' in an empty directory).
bash is aborting loudly which is arguably un-useful.

I concur with the reporting of this to bash-bugs.

Todd Whitesel
toddpw @ best.com