no need to reinvent the wheel. Thanks to the OP for the "obsolete" hint. 'declare' may come in pretty handy on systems paranoid about "up-to-dateness" Show Sample Output

5 helpful aliases for using the which utility, specifically for the GNU which (2.16 tested) that is included in coreutils. Which is run first for a command. Same as type builtin minus verbosity alias which='{ command alias; command declare -f; } | command which --read-functions --read-alias' Which (a)lias alias whicha='command alias | command which --read-alias' Which (f)unction alias whichf='command declare -f | command which --read-functions' Which e(x)ecutable file in PATH alias whichx='command which' Which (all) alias, function, builtin, and files in PATH alias whichall='{ command alias; command declare -f; } | command which --read-functions --read-alias -a' # From my .bash_profile http://www.askapache.com/linux-unix/bash_profile-functions-advanced-shell.html Show Sample Output

I was looking for the fastest way to create a bunch of ansi escapes for use in echo -e commands throughout a lot of my shell scripts. This is what I came up with, and I actually stick that loop command in a function and then just call that at the beginning of my scripts to not clutter the environment with these escape codes, which can wreck havok on my terminal when I'm dumping the environment. More of a cool way to store escape ansi codes in an array. You can echo them like: echo -e "${CC[15]}This text is black on bright green background." I usually just use with a function: # setup_colors - Adds colors to array CC for global use # 30 - Black, 31 - Red, 32 - Green, 33 - Yellow, 34 - Blue, 35 - Magenta, 36 - Blue/Green, 37 - White, 30/42 - Black on Green '30\;42' function setup_colors(){ declare -ax CC; for i in `seq 0 7`;do ii=$(($i+7));CC[$i]="\033[1;3${i}m";CC[$ii]="\033[0;3${i}m";done;CC[15]="\033[30;42m"; export R='\033[0;00m';export X="\033[1;37m"; }; export -f setup_colors CC[15] has a background of bright green which is why it is separate. R resets everything, and X is my default font of bright white. CC[15]="\033[30;42m"; R=$'\033[0;00m'; X=$'\033[1;37m' Those are just my favorite colors that I often use in my scripts. You can test which colors by running for i in $(seq 0 $((${#CC[@]} - 1))); do echo -e "${CC[$i]}[$i]\n$R"; done See: http://www.askapache.com/linux-unix/bash_profile-functions-advanced-shell.html for more usage. Show Sample Output

Normally the bash builtin command 'set' displays all vars and functions. This just shows the vars. Useful if you want to see different output then env or declare or export. Alias 'sete' shows sets variables alias sete='set|sed -n "/^`declare -F|sed -n "s/^declare -f \(.*\)/\1 ()/p;q"`/q;p"' Alias setf shows the functions. alias setf='set|sed -n "/^`declare -F|sed -n "s/^declare -f \(.*\)/\1 ()/p;q"`/,\$p"' Also see: http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/6899/print-all-environment-variables-including-hidden-ones At the very least, some cool sed commands! From my .bash_profile http://www.askapache.com/linux-unix/bash_profile-functions-advanced-shell.html Show Sample Output