[likpok]

Zsh (and possibly other shells?) will expand a raw ^ into filenames. '' is a little shorter than '^' if you have to quote it.

[jolmg]

> and possibly other shells?

Years ago--I don't if it's still the case--but the fish shell used ^ to redirect stderr.

EDIT: I remembered right:

https://web.archive.org/web/20111111003423/http://fishshell....

but it seems it's no longer the case:

  fish> echo foo ^ bar
  foo ^ bar

https://fishshell.com/docs/current/tutorial.html#pipes-and-r...