Sometimes you don’t want binary characters cluttering up your shell script. Maybe you want to e-mail the script and you are afraid of what the various mail systems in the path might do to your data.

Parameter expansion on a Linux system is a feature in the bash shell that allows you to manipulate the values of variables, but you need to use a specific syntax.

It is easy to dismiss bash — the typical Linux shell program — as just a command prompt that allows scripting. Bash, however, is a full-blown programming language. I wouldn’t pres… ...

It's not hard to create and run a shell script in Linux distros like Ubuntu, but there are a few non-obvious pitfalls you need to avoid. Here's a quick example of how to execute a script in Linux.