I recently came across the following example for switching time zones: $ date Fr 6. Jun 12:49:30 CEST 2008 $ TZ=UTC date Fr 6. Jun 10:49:35 UTC 2008 Could someone please explain to me the general shell syntax involved here? I did not know that I could put an assignment and a command on one line. My dull approach would have been $ echo $TZ $ TZ=UTC $ export TZ $ date Fr 6. Jun 10:54:29 UTC 2008 $ unset TZ $ date Fr 6. Jun 12:54:39 CEST 2008 Thanks in advance, Malte