Ok, I can't script my way out of a papper bag, so I need help with this.I declare some variables at the prompt:export catname=Fluffyexport dogname=SpotI make a no-executable file called text.dat ...

Last month, we took a strange turn and actually just focused on the basics of shell scripting, special variable notation, rather than solving some complex and obscure scripting challenge. I'm going to ...

It is easy to dismiss bash — the typical Linux shell program — as just a command prompt that allows scripting. Bash, however, is a full-blown programming language. I wouldn’t pres… ...

Autocomplete—found everywhere from text messaging apps to IDEs—can seem like a fairly modern innovation, but it’s been present in various forms of Unix since the early 80s, if not earlier. Linux ...

Every time we publish a Linux hack that uses a shell script, someone will chime in about how awful it is to program shell scripts. While we like the ubiquity and efficiency, we can’t disagree… ...

Once you've got the Variables panel open, create a script with a few variable declarations in it and start a debugging session. In the example below, I've created a script and defined two variables.

A special variable that I use with great frequency for helping create temporary file names is $$, which expands to the current process ID in the system. For example: $ echo $$ 3243 If you're doing a ...