Bash (or shell) scripting is a great way to automate repetitive tasks and can save you a ton of time as a developer. Bash scripts execute within a Bash shell interpreter terminal. Any command you can run in your terminal can be run in a Bash script. When you have a command or set of commands that you will be using frequently, consider writing a Bash script to perform it.

There are some conventions to follow to ensure that your computer is able to find and execute your Bash scripts. The beginning of your script file should start with #!/bin/bash on its own line. This tells the computer which type of interpreter to use for the script. When saving the script file, it is good practice to place commonly used scripts in the ~/bin/ directory.