Mastering Bash

Assigning a variable

As we just saw, a variable is a way to store a value: we get a value, assign it to a variable and refer to the latter to access the former. The operation of retrieving the content of a variable is named variable substitution. A bit like, if you think about descriptors, the way that you use them to access files. The way you assign a variable is quite straightforward:

LABEL=value  

LABEL can be any string, can have upper and lowercase, start with or contain numbers and underscores, and it is case sensitive.

The assignment is performed by the = character, which, be wary, is not the same as the equal to == sign; they are two different things and are used in different contexts. Finally, whatever you put at the right of the ...