/**/ How to define variables in shell script? - Dextutor Linux

How to define variables in shell script?

In this post we will learn how to define variables in shell script. A variable is used to store any value. The value can be an integer, float, character or even a string. There is not need to write the data type as is the case with C or C++ languages. For example

x=1
y=2.5
name="Your name"

are all valid variable definitions. Also, there is no need to specify the data type. The shell will take care of it automatically. The general syntax is:
variable=value

Valid Variable Name in shell script

A variable name must start with a character(A-Za-z) or an Underscore(_) then there can be any number of characters, digits(0-9) or underscore.

Some examples of valid variable names are

Name
sum1
_Count23
A_B_2

Some examples of invalid variable names are

123
1ABC
@CB
Abc*df

Accessing value of a Variable

To get/use the value of a variable ‘$’ sign is used. For example

Name="Robert Junior"
echo "Value of variable Name is $Name"

Run the above script as:

How to define variables in shell script?

How to assign filename to a variable in shell?

The method to assign a filename to a variable is similar as above. Now, there can be two situations. One, you already know the filename. For example there is a file “F1.txt”. So, simple write

f_name=F1.txt

Second, if you want to store the name entered by the user in a variable

echo "Enter filename"
read f_name

Now, when the user runs the script and enters the filename, it gets stored in the variable f_name.

Difference between using Double Quotes (“) and Single Quotes (‘)

Suppose that you the variable name is Name. In the output you want the statement to contain the word $Name. Now, how can you do this?

Name=Robert
echo "Value of $Name is $Name"

The output will be:

Value of Robert is Robert

But, what we want is

Value of $Name is Robert

To achieve this use Single Quotes a shown below:

Name="Robert"
echo Value of '$Name' is $Name

This time the output will be as expected that is,
Value of $Name is Robert

Some other useful links

passwd command
useradd command
groupadd command

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