Hello, seems like the -r (raw mode) flag which should prevent it from interpreting backslashes is not working? My understanding is the following example shouldn't clear the "CLEAR" part. I can also demonstrate with new lines. $ read -r TEST asd\c CLEAR $ echo $TEST asd $ zsh --version zsh 5.8 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) According to pacman the installed version is 5.8.1 I was also able to reproduce on my mac zsh 5.7.1 (x86_64-apple-darwin19.0)