Combinator Attack problems with OCLHC2.01

[Jiminy]

I read the write-ups about the combinator attack in both the OCLhashcat wiki and the FAQ and am having difficulty getting it to work.  I'm working with a pdf hash and can get both dictionarys to work however when I try to us the -j and -k commands it fails.
The command line is I use is:  HC64.exe -m 10500 -a 1 hash.txt  lwd.txt rwd.txt.  When I enter the command as shown (with the proper hash name) it works fine, however I want to prepend numbers to the first dictionary and append to the second dictionary (as described in the wiki).  I've saw the syntax for the toggle command (T0) in the FAQ and applied it as shown and it works properly, however when I enter a -j$xx or -k$xx it tells me that the lwd.txt file is empty.     Where / how do these two commands go in the command line indicated above to make this work?  I am a newbie however I read as much as I could find on the combinator attack.  I know I'll get blasted by the experts out there, but I ask very few questions and try to read as much as possible before asking. (BTW the HC64.exe is just the .exe file renamed so as to type less in the command line.)

[epixoip]

This has nothing to do with hashcat, you simply need to learn how to use your shell.

[stepMode]

[...] however when I enter a -j$xx or -k$xx it tells me that the lwd.txt file is empty.

Here is the example from the wiki:

Code:

Example.

Dictionary 1

yellow
green
black
blue

Dictionary 2

car
bike

Commands

-j $-

-k $!

The output would be…

yellow-car!
green-car!
black-car!
blue-car!
yellow-bike!
green-bike!
black-bike!
blue-bike!

[philsmd]

as epixoip said, you need to escape special symbols on your shell
this has nothing to do with oclHashcat

for instance -j $x won't work, because $x is seen as a variable by your operating system. escape it and you are fine

[Jiminy]

as epixoip said, you need to escape special symbols on your shell
this has nothing to do with oclHashcat

for instance -j $x won't work, because $x is seen as a variable by your operating system. escape it and you are fine

philsmd, 
Thank you for your positive and helpful response. 

This worked  -k "^xx"   before the first dictionary and  "-k i0xx" after the second dictionary seems to work (see below quote from ATOM).  At least it's running now without error. Also searching further, found another post by ATOM that seems to work in place of the -j rule   --rule-right="^^xx" placed after the second dictionary.  I could not get the -j rule to work for the second dictionary at all and   --rule-left="^^xx" would not work before the first dictionary.

I  found another post by ATOM that had a work around as quoted below from another having the same type of problem.

"I can reproduce the problem. Please open a TRAC Ticket.
There's a workaround: Instead of "-j $-" you can use "-k i0-".
PS: You could also use ^ but ^ is the escape character on windows, so you might need to use ^^."

Again, thank you for responding.  I will try to make better searches in the future so as to not waste any more of the expert's time.