Xaprb

Download Bash Cheatsheet

The bash shell has a powerful parameter expansion syntax, but it’s complex and hard to remember. I always forget which syntax does what, even though I use it all the time for scripts and one-off jobs. Unfortunately, I find the man page unhelpful as a reference, so I’ve made a cheat sheet for myself. Perhaps you’ll find it useful too.

If you want the whole story, type man bash into a terminal, and search for the section titled EXPANSION. There you’ll find the full details, such as this:

${parameter%word}
${parameter%%word}

The word is expanded to produce a pattern just as in pathname expansion. If the pattern matches a trailing portion of the expanded value of parameter, then the result of the expansion is the expanded value of parameter with the shortest matching pattern (the “%” case) or the longest matching pattern (the “%%” case) deleted. If parameter is @ or *, the pattern removal operation is applied to each positional parameter in turn, and the expansion is the resultant list. If parameter is an array variable subscripted with @ or *, the pattern removal operation is applied to each member of the array in turn, and the expansion is the resultant list.

Hence the need for the cheatsheet :-)

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