The echo command echos a string to the terminal. One use for this command is in determining the contents of environment variables. Environment variables are variables that Unix keeps track of at the shell level. Two common examples are TERM and PATH. The TERM variable identifies what kind of terminal you are using. The PATH variable contains a list of pathnames to search through when looking for commands. More information on environment variables can be found in section [*].
To see the contents of the TERM variable type echo $TERM.