Hour 9. Substitution
When the shell encounters an expression that contains one or more meta-characters, it performs substitutions on that expression. Meta-characters are characters that have a special meaning in the shell. Substitution is the process by which the shell converts a string containing meta-characters into a different string that is the result of interpreting the meta-characters. In the last chapter, you saw how the $ meta-character can be used to access a variable's value in a process known as variable substitution. In addition to variable substitution, the shell can also perform several other types of substitutions. This chapter looks at each of these types of substitution and their associated meta-characters in detail. Specifically ...
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