Sams Teach Yourself Shell Programming in 24 Hours, Second Edition

Working with Variables

Two types of variables can be used in shell programming:

• Scalar variables

• Array variables

Scalar variables can hold only one value at a time. Array variables can hold multiple values. This section explores the use of both types of variables.

Scalar Variables

Scalar variables are defined as follows:

							name=value
						

Here name is the name of the variable, and value is the value that the variable should hold. For example,

FRUIT=peach

defines the variable FRUIT and assigns it the value peach.

Scalar variables are often referred to as name-value pairs, because a variable's name and its value can be thought of as a pair.

Variable ...