I'd like to know what the minus (-) and the EOC in the command below means. I know some languages like Perl allows you to chose any combination of character (not bound to EOF) but is that the case here? And the minus is a complete mystery for me. Thanks in advance!
ftp -v -n $SERVER >> $LOG_FILE <<-EOC user $USERNAME $PWD binary cd $DIR1 mkdir $dir_lock get $FILE bye EOC That's a here-document redirection.
command <<-word here-document contents word The word used to delimit the here-document is arbitrary. It's common, but not necessary, to use an upper-case word.
The - in <<-word has the effect that tabs will be stripped from the beginning of each line in the contents of the here-document.
cat <<-SERVICE_ANNOUNCEMENT hello world SERVICE_ANNOUNCEMENT If the above here-document was written with literal tabs at the start of each line, it would result in the output
hello world rather than
hello world Tabs before the end delimiter are also stripped out with <<- (but not without the -):
cat <<-SERVICE_ANNOUNCEMENT hello world SERVICE_ANNOUNCEMENT (same output)
From man bash:
If the redirection operator is <<-, then all leading tab characters are stripped from input lines and the line containing delimiter. This allows here-documents within shell scripts to be indented in a natural fashion. 
