Small, Sharp Software Tools

Your Turn

In this chapter, you explored a few ways to customize your environment. Take a shot at these challenges to stretch your thinking before moving on.

1. For each of the following variables, identify what the variable is for and whether it’s an environment variable or a shell variable:

   • HOME
   • LANG
   • OLDPWD
   • CDPATH

2. Create the following aliases:

   • An alias called ep which opens your ~/.bashrc file in nano so you can make changes quickly.

   • An alias called sp which sources your ~/.bashrc file so you can apply those changes.

   • An alias that displays the shell and environment variables, without displaying functions, that displays the results one page at a time.

3. Modify your showme function to display a calendar. Use the cal or ncal command you explored in the ...