This post is about how to bash commands and programming tutorials with examples.
Bash Shell Variable
variable are basic blocks of any programming language. Shell and bash script programming provide variables like others.
It is a container used to store the data in programming. It contains a pointer to the memory location of the data. Declare variable: To create a variable, You must assign the value.
variableName=variableValue
variableName:
It is the name of the variable that contains any names by using a combination of alphabets(a to z, A to Z), numbers(0 to 9), and underscore(_) symbols.
VariableValue
is a value stored in a variable, It can be a string of numbers or a boolean.
equal symbol
(=) is to assign the value to a variable.
For example
AGE=25
variable=AGE
is created and assigned with value=25
how to access variables in Bash
Once variables are declared and assigned value, You can access them with a prefix dollar symbol($
)+ variable name.
AGE=25
echo $AGE
Bash Shell Readonly variables
variables are changed to new values using a new assignment.
AGE=25
echo $AGE
AGE=35
echo $AGE
Output:
25
35
How do you make variables not updatable?
The readonly
keyword does not allow a change in its value. These are also called constants.
AGE=25
echo $AGE
readonly AGE
AGE=35
echo $AGE
The above code throws an error during AGE=35, the error is `AGE: is read-only. Output;
25
line 6: AGE: is read-only
Bash unset variable
unset keyword helps to remove the value from the given variable. The Variable is still accessible and prints an empty value.
AGE=25
echo $AGE
unset AGE
echo "empty":$AGE
Output:
25
empty:
You can define variable scopes in two ways
- Global variable
- Local variable
Bash Global Variables
Variables declared in a shell script are called global variables.
global variables accessed within a function or any nested blocks of a shell script file
default variable declared is called a global variable
setAge() {
echo "Inside Function Age: $AGE"
}
AGE=40
setAge
echo "Script Age: $tmp"
Output
Inside Function Age: 40
Script Age: 40
Bash Local variables
Local variables are declared inside a block of code or a function. The scope of these variable types is visible inside it only.
Syntax:
local variablename=variablevalue
Here, the variable is declared and assigned with the local
keyword
setAge() {
local AGE=25
echo "Local Variable Age: $AGE"
}
AGE=40
setAge
echo "Global Age: $tmp"
Output
Local Variable Age: 25
Global Age: 40
a local variable is declared inside a function and only visible inside a function. The outside function is called global variables that are available for all functions.
Display Environment variables in Bash
There are two types of commands to print environment variables.
- printenv command
- env command
Both the above commands list out all environment variables of the terminal.
Important points about variables:
- variable read by prefix with $ symbol
- variable names are written using alphabets or numbers or underscore
- variables are case sensitive. for example,
test
andTest
are two different variables in scripting - variable names are UPPERCASE by convention, but you can create using UPPER or LOWER case