Whenever we declare any variable, by default, this variable stores the string type of data. We cannot do arithmetic operations on them. We can declare a variable as an integer by using the declare command. Such variables are declared as integers; if we try to assign a string to them, then bash assigns 0 to these variables.
Bash will report an error if we try to assign fractional values (floating points) to integer variables.
We can create an integer variable called value, shown as follows:
$ declare -i value
We tell the shell that the variable value is of type integer. Otherwise, the shell treats all variables as character strings:
- If we try to assign the name string to the integer variable value ...
