EX200 Create simple shell scripts Practice Question
A new intern created a script to display the current user's home directory:
#!/bin/bash echo "Home directory: $home"
The script outputs 'Home directory: ' with nothing after the colon. What is the most likely cause?
⚠ Common exam trap
EX200 often tests whether candidates overlook shell case-sensitivity and instead blame environment configuration or shell choice, when the real cause is a simple variable-name typo.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
There is a typo: it should be $HOME, not $home.
Bash variable names are case-sensitive, so $home is a distinct variable from the standard $HOME environment variable. Since 'home' was never assigned, it expands to an empty string, producing the observed output. The correct reference is $HOME.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
The HOME variable is not set in the environment.
Why it's wrong here
If HOME were genuinely unset, the script would not print a wrong-looking empty line for that specific reason. On RHEL and other Linux systems, HOME is set by the login process (PAM/systemd), inherited by subshells, and also re-established by bash for interactive and non-interactive shells using the current user's passwd entry. A missing HOME causes far more severe issues—such as shell startup scripts failing to find ~/.bashrc or commands using ~ misbehaving—so the symptom would not be limited to a single echo. Therefore an unset HOME is not the cause here.
- ✓
There is a typo: it should be $HOME, not $home.
Why this is correct
The command uses $home, which is a different variable name from $HOME because bash is case-sensitive. Environment variables like HOME are uppercase by convention, and the lowercase $home is not defined in any standard shell session, so it expands to an empty string. Assigning or exporting a lowercase home would require the script author to have previously set it, and echo "$home" would then output that value rather than the actual home directory. The only correct fix is to change the script to use $HOME (or ${HOME}).
- ✗
The script is run with 'sh' instead of 'bash'.
Why it's wrong here
Running a script with 'sh' instead of 'bash' changes the shell to POSIX mode, but it does not undefine standard environment variables. On RHEL, /bin/sh is actually a symlink to bash or a minimal POSIX shell, and every login shell—including the one that invokes the script—sets HOME from the passwd database or from PAM. The variable $HOME is not a bash-specific feature; it is part of the portable process environment that sh also honors. Thus, invoking the script as 'sh script.sh' would not strip HOME.
- ✗
The root user has no home directory.
Why it's wrong here
The root account's home directory is not empty or nonexistent; by default on Red Hat based systems, root's home is /root. The /etc/passwd entry for root explicitly lists /root as the home directory, and both su and login set HOME=/root for root sessions. If the script were executed by root, $HOME would expand to /root, yielding output rather than nothing. Claiming that root has no home directory reverses the actual security and administrative convention.
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JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Red Hat exam blueprint
This EX200 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Red Hat certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the EX200 exam.