Sams Teach Yourself Shell Programming in 24 Hours, Second Edition

Appendix B. Glossary

Absolute Pathname

Represents the location of a file or directory starting from / and listing all the directories between / and the file or directory of interest. The pathname /etc/hosts is an absolute pathname.

Abstraction

Scripts that use abstraction retain the same basic flow by placing the conditional execution statements within functions. When a function is called, it makes a decision as to which commands execute on a given platform.

Alias

An abbreviation or an alternative name, usually mnemonic, for a command.

Anchoring

Anchoring a regular expression limits matches to lines that begin or end with the expression.

Arguments

Command modifiers that change the behavior of a command.

Array Variable

A variable that groups multiple ...