# Introduction to Bash scripting

Welcome to this Bash basics training guide! In this **bash crash course**, you will learn the **Bash basics** so you could start writing your own Bash scripts and automate your daily tasks.

Bash is a Unix shell and command language. It is widely available on various operating systems, and it is also the default command interpreter on most Linux systems.

Bash stands for Bourne-Again SHell. As with other shells, you can use Bash interactively directly in your terminal, and also, you can use Bash like any other programming language to write scripts. This book will help you learn the basics of Bash scripting including Bash Variables, User Input, Comments, Arguments, Arrays, Conditional Expressions, Conditionals, Loops, Functions, Debugging, and testing.

Bash scripts are great for automating repetitive workloads and can help you save time considerably. For example, imagine working with a group of five developers on a project that requires a tedious environment setup. In order for the program to work correctly, each developer has to manually set up the environment. That's the same and very long task (setting up the environment) repeated five times at least. This is where you and Bash scripts come to the rescue! So instead, you create a simple text file containing all the necessary instructions and share it with your teammates. And now, all they have to do is execute the Bash script and everything will be created for them.

In order to write Bash scripts, you just need a UNIX terminal and a text editor like Sublime Text, VS Code, or a terminal-based editor like vim or nano.
