I thought this might be a cool idea for a newbie scripting thread. Since I'm just learning scripting it will be useful for me, and hopefully useful to others in the same boat.

Something I just came across in the Advance Bash Scripting Guide

most everyone who's done any work in the shell knows ~ is the home directory of the current user. What I just found out (and this may be embarrisingly simple) is that:

~+ = current working directory
~- = previous working directory

The ABS also mentions ~= but I had trouble understanding exactly what that one does.

That's good to know; Bump.

Apart from searching LQ for it (especially the programming forum is full of interesting questions and scripts) there's more (mixed) tips and tricks in the Tricks and hints thread.

My bookmarks concerning bash:

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Bash-Prog-Intro-HOWTO.html
http://www.tldp.org/guides.html#abs
http://theory.uwinnipeg.ca/UNIXhelp/
http://www.onlamp.com/linux/cmd/
http://www.justlinux.com/nhf/Shells/..._Commands.html
http://infocom.cqu.edu.au/Units/aut9...uestions/bash/
http://linux.org.mt/article/terminal
http://www.dreaming.org/~giles/bashprompt/

and for spice:

http://zsh.sunsite.dk/Guide/zshguide.html