title: Printing the IFS chars
body: <p>I've noticed that to print the value of the <code>$IFS</code> variable in the shell I have to do something like:</p>
  <pre><code>$ printf '%s\nYour IFS is: %q' 'Hello' &quot;$IFS&quot;
  Hello
  Your IFS is: $' \t\n'
  </code></pre>
  <p>My question is why do I need to pass the <code>IFS</code> in that special way? For example, why (or why wouldn't) it be possible to do:</p>
  <ul>
  <li><code>$ echo $IFS</code> -- some parameter that prints special characters?</li>
  <li><code>$ printf &quot;$IFS&quot;</code> or <code>$ printf '$IFS' </code> -- why wouldn't either of these work?</li>
  <li>Why <code>$ printf &quot;%q&quot; $IFS</code> and <code>$ printf &quot;%q&quot; '$IFS'</code> don't show this properly but <code>$ printf &quot;%q&quot; &quot;$IFS&quot;</code> does?</li>
  </ul>