On Wed, 3 Apr 2013, Gerry wrote: > strings /proc/$$/environ It took me awhile to figure that one out. So the variable $ is the PID for the current (bash) shell as in... echo $$ ps aux | grep -w $$ So /proc/$$ is a directory with info related to the current bash shell and the file environ in that directory holds the environment strings. They seem to be delimited by null (NUL) characters. So this shows the environment strings: tr '\0' '\n' < /proc/$$/environ The strings command provides exactly the same output and it is easier to type. Mike