Documentation< Previous | Contents | Next >
What Is Stored In The Environment?
The shell stores two basic types of data in the environment, though, with bash, the types are largely indistinguishable. They are environment variables and shell variables. Shell variables are bits of data placed there by bash, and environment variables are ev- erything else. In addition to variables, the shell also stores some programmatic data, namely aliases and shell functions. We covered aliases in Chapter 5, and shell functions (which are related to shell scripting) will be covered in Part 4.