Check if a file is really a file, whether a string contains anything, and whether you can run a program with these vital patterns.

Hi there,<br><br>I have seeing some shell script examples that use (use, not declare!) variables like this:<br><br><pre class="ip-ubbcode-code-pre">${VAR_1}</pre> <br ...

Last month, we took a strange turn and actually just focused on the basics of shell scripting, special variable notation, rather than solving some complex and obscure scripting challenge. I'm going to ...

There I was, trying to come up with a topic for this column, when I did what I usually do when stumped: I sent a question out to my Twitter followers. This time, I got a great answer, from John ...