Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 11 views

    Bash Regular Expressions - Mitch Frazier - Linux Journal

    Uploaded by

    Technical Novice

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Bash Regular Expressions - Mitch Frazier - Linux Journal

    Uploaded by

    Technical Novice
    11 views2 pages

    Original Title

    Bash Regular Expressions – Mitch Frazier – Linux Journal

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    11 views2 pages

    Bash Regular Expressions - Mitch Frazier - Linux Journal

    Uploaded by

    Technical Novice

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 2

    05/04/2020 Bash Regular Expressions | Linux Journal

    Bash Regular Expressions


    linuxjournal.com/content/bash-regular-expressions

    When working with regular expressions in a shell script the norm is to use grep or sed or some
    other external command/program. Since version 3 of bash (released in 2004) there is another
    option: bash's built-in regular expression comparison operator "=~".

    Bash's regular expression comparison operator takes a string on the left and an extended regular
    expression on the right. It returns 0 (success) if the regular expression matches the string,
    otherwise it returns 1 (failure).

    In addition to doing simple matching, bash regular expressions support sub-patterns surrounded
    by parenthesis for capturing parts of the match. The matches are assigned to an array variable
    BASH_REMATCH. The entire match is assigned to BASH_REMATCH[0], the first sub-pattern is
    assigned to BASH_REMATCH[1], etc..

    The following example script takes a regular expression as its first argument and one or more
    strings to match against. It then cycles through the strings and outputs the results of the match
    process:

    #!/bin.bash

    if [[ $# -lt 2 ]]; then


    echo "Usage: $0 PATTERN STRINGS..."
    exit 1
    fi
    regex=$1
    shift
    echo "regex: $regex"
    echo

    while [[ $1 ]]
    do
    if [[ $1 =~ $regex ]]; then
    echo "$1 matches"
    i=1
    n=${#BASH_REMATCH[*]}
    while [[ $i -lt $n ]]
    do
    echo " capture[$i]: ${BASH_REMATCH[$i]}"
    let i++
    done
    else
    echo "$1 does not match"
    fi
    shift
    done

    Assuming the script is saved in "bashre.sh", the following sample shows its output:

    https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/bash-regular-expressions 1/2
    05/04/2020 Bash Regular Expressions | Linux Journal

    # sh bashre.sh 'aa(b{2,3}[xyz])cc' aabbxcc aabbcc


    regex: aa(b{2,3}[xyz])cc

    aabbxcc matches
    capture[1]: bbx
    aabbcc does not match

    Mitch Frazier is an embedded systems programmer at Emerson Electric Co. Mitch


    has been a contributor to and a friend of Linux Journal since the early 2000s.

    https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/bash-regular-expressions 2/2

    You might also like