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Environment variables are like variables in a programming language like python or perl (in fact bash is a complete programming language). They have a name (like BIWORK above) and a value (the value for BIWORK is the pathname /work/projects/BioITeam). Read more about environemt variables here: More on environment variables.
shell completion
You can use these environment variables to shorten typing, for example, to look at the contents of the shared /work/projects/BioITeam directory as shown below, using the magic Tab key to perform shell completion.
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