title: Concatenating asterisks in bash
body: <p>I am trying to concatenate asterisks (<code>*</code>) to a string variable. However, I keep getting the files in the current directory instead. I have tried</p>
  
  <pre><code>row+='*'
  row+=$row     #where row is *
  row='*'"$row"
  row="\*$row"
  row="${row}*"
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>etc.</p>
  
  <pre><code>row='*'."$row"  #produces *.*.*. 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I thought <code>\</code> would escape the <code>*</code>, but it didn't work.</p>