question mark (?) in shell variable

Question

I want to use a variable with this name: topMiddleOligocenetoUpperEocene?

how can I do it in a shell script (i.e., using the question mark)? I tried:

{topMiddleOligocenetoUpperEocene?}="something"

but it's not understood in my shell script (myfile.sh using in the first row #!/bin/sh).

Any hint will be appreciated, thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Can't. That's not a valid identifier in bash. See the definition of name at http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bashref.html#Definitions

name

A word consisting solely of letters, numbers, and underscores, and beginning with a letter or underscore. Names are used as shell variable and function names. Also referred to as an identifier.