Bash Variables

As with any other programming language, you can use variables in bash as well. However, there are no data types and a variable in bash can container numbers and characters.

To assign a value to a variable all you need to do is use the = sign:

name="DevDojo"

Note: as an important note, you can not have spaces before and after the = sign.

After that to access the variable, you have to use the $ and reference it like this:

echo $name

Wrapping the variable name between curly brackets is not required but is considered good practice:

echo ${name}

The above would output: DevDojo as this is the value of our variable.

Next, let's update our devdojo.sh script and include a variable.

Again, with your favorite text editor open the file:

nano devdojo.sh

And update the file so it looks like this:

#!/bin/bash

name="DevDojo"

echo "Hi there $name"

Save it and run it again:

./devdojo.sh

You would see the following output on your screen:

Hi there DevDojo

Here is a rundown of the script:

• #!/bin/bash - first we specified our shebang
• name=DevDojo - then we specified a variable called name and assigned a value to it
• echo "Hi there $name" - finally we output the content of the variable on the screen by using echo`