I found out on Ask Ubuntu I can use this command to figure out what shell I am in.
echo $0
I like this because it is simple as compared to more complex solutions like this one on the Unix and Linux Stack Exchange.
I imagine echo is similar to print but what is the $0?
Eventually I would like to be able to open up multiple tabs programmatically similar to seen here on Stack Overlow.
That uses gnome-terminal but I am using Bash.
As explained in this comment on that answer you link to, echo $0 simply shows you the name of the currently running process:
$0 is the name of the running process. If you use it inside of a shell then it will return the name of the shell. If you use it inside of a script, it will be the name of the script.
More details can be found here on this other site:
$0 is one of the Bash special parameters. It can only be referenced as follows (just an example as there are various ways to reference and use $0 while scripting).
So just create a Bash script like this. First open up a file for writing called test.sh with Nano like this:
nano test.sh
Then put these contents into that file:
#!/bin/bash
echo $0
Then hit Ctrl+X, save the file. Now make the script executable like this:
chmod 700 test.sh
Now run it like this:
./test.sh
And the output would be:
./test.sh
So for the purposes you describe echo $0 won’t really work.
