What is Bash?

Bashan acronym for Bourne-Again Shell is a command language interpreter. It is the default interpreter on most GNU/Linux systems and is widely available in several other others as well.

If you are a Linux user, you will have noticed a dollar sign ($) or a hash (#) showing up every time you start up your terminal. This is a prompt or indication that Bash is waiting for user input. To confirm this, use the echo command:

To effectively use Bash, you need to be comfortable giving it commands. In fact, you have already seen how you can do so with the echo command above. This command is used to simply display text on the terminal screen. The commands below display uppercase alphabets from A to Z, numbers from 1 to 10, and the text “Hello World!”:

If you are interested in learning more about useful Unix commands, read this shot.

We can also use scripts to run a series of commands on Bash using files with the .sh extension. To learn more, click here to visit our shot on Bash scripting.