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Welcome! In this lesson, we'll dive into how your Linux shell keeps track of important information. This 'environment' helps your commands run smoothly.

Think of it as your shell's personal workspace, full of settings and shortcuts.

Environment variables are dynamic named values that store information used by the shell and other programs. They let you customize how your system behaves.

• They are like temporary storage for your shell.
• They can hold paths, user settings, and more.
• Other programs can read these variables to know how to act.

You can see all active environment variables using the printenv command. To view a specific variable, use echo $VARIABLE_NAME.

The dollar sign $ before a variable name tells the shell to show its value.

Two very common and important environment variables are PATH and HOME:

• PATH: A list of directories where the shell looks for executable commands. When you type ls, the shell checks these directories.
• HOME: The absolute path to your home directory. This is where your personal files and settings are usually stored.

You can create your own environment variables for the current shell session. Just assign a value to a name:

VARIABLE_NAME="value"

Note that there are no spaces around the = sign. These variables are temporary and disappear when you close the terminal.

Variables set directly are only available in the current shell. To make them available to any sub-processes (like scripts or other commands you run from your current shell), you need to export them.

Command aliases are custom shortcuts for longer commands or sequences of commands. They save you typing and can even fix common typos.

• They personalize your command-line experience.
• You define a short name that expands to a longer command.
• Great for frequently used, complex commands.

To create an alias, use the alias command followed by name='command'. Like variables, these are temporary and last only for the current shell session.

A common example is aliasing ls -alF to ll for a detailed file listing.

To see all aliases currently active in your shell, simply type alias without any arguments. If you want to remove an alias, use the unalias command.

You've learned about environment variables and aliases. Let's test your knowledge!

Consider the following:

MY_VAR="Test"
export MY_VAR

Which statement is true after running these commands?

Great job! You've successfully explored environment variables and aliases.

• Environment variables store key-value pairs for your shell and programs.
• Use echo $VAR to see a variable's value and printenv to list them all.
• export makes variables available to sub-processes.
• Aliases are custom shortcuts for commands, created with alias name='command'.
• Both are temporary by default, lasting only for the current shell session.

Next, you'll learn how to make these customizations permanent!