[DominikHoffmann]

The way I read bash's man page

Code:
Backslash escape sequences, if present,  are  decoded
       as follows:
              \a     alert (bell)
              \b     backspace
              \e     an escape character
              \f     form feed
              \n     new line
              \r     carriage return
              \t     horizontal tab
              \v     vertical tab
              \\     backslash
              \'     single quote
              \nnn   the  eight-bit  character  whose value is the octal value
                     nnn (one to three digits)
              \xHH   the eight-bit character whose value  is  the  hexadecimal
                     value HH (one or two hex digits)
              \cx    a control-x character

       The  expanded  result  is  single-quoted, as if the dollar sign had not
       been present.

I can specify special characters using the backslash and their three-digit octal character code. Therefore

Code:
echo "\"\""

and

Code:
echo "\042\042"

should have the same output. However, the first displays (as expected)

Code:
""

and the second (to me inexplicably)

Code:
\042\042

Why would that be?

Dominik Hoffmann