Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook - Third Edition

How to do it...

Assign a value to a variable with the equal sign operator:

varName=value

The name of the variable is varName and value is the value to be assigned to it. If value does not contain any space character (such as space), it need not be enclosed in quotes, otherwise it must be enclosed in single or double quotes.

Note that var = value and var=value are different. It is a usual mistake to write var = value instead of var=value. An equal sign without spaces is an assignment operation, whereas using spaces creates an equality test.

Access the contents of a variable by prefixing the variable name with a dollar sign ($).

var="value" #Assign "value" to var
echo $var

You may also use it like this:

echo ${var}

This output will be ...