
In Linux and Unix-like operating systems, the echo
command is used to print text or the value of a variable to the terminal. When used in combination with a shell variable, the $
symbol is used to reference the value of that variable.
For example, if you have a variable named foo
that has been set to the value bar
, running the command echo $foo
will print bar
to the terminal. This is because the $foo
notation is used to reference the value stored in the foo
variable.
When echo $
is run, it will print the value of the current shell environment variable, which is empty, it will print nothing. The shell environment variable is a special kind of variable that is used to store information about the current shell session, such as the current working directory, the user’s home directory, and other system-related information.
echo
command also have different options and flags you can use with it. such as -n
option to not print the new line at the end of the string and -e
option to enable the interpretation of backslash escapes, like newline and tab.
For example:
echo -n "This is a test" #This will not print a newline at the end
echo -e "This is a test\nThis is a new line" #This will interpret the newline escape sequence and print the string on two lines
In summary, echo $
is a command used in Linux and Unix-like operating systems to print the value of the current shell environment variable to the terminal. It will print nothing as the value is empty.