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 ...

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 ...

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… ...

In plain old make you use them the same way you use curly braces in shell scripts. If it is in a shell script, then the the parenthesis signify subshell evaluation.

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.

For example, a common issue with shell scripts is to forget to quote an environment variable that could hold a file name that contains spaces. For example, consider this really simple script: ...

In a previous column, I showed how to do substring expansion with shell variables in the form of $ {var:start:length}, but it's also useful to know the length of a variable's value. This can be done ...