Shell Programming and Scripting

Hmm, in this case i stand corrected. I only used it with the sh version in AIX (which is a ksh88) and there it works. So either it is a bug from porting it to Solaris or IBM fixed it when porting the ksh to AIX. Interesting to know that this feature seems not so global as i thought it to be.

/Addendum: only now i recognised a rather careless typo in my example above, which i have now corrected: instead of the correct ${NAMES/${EXCLUDE_NAME}/} (replace ${EXCLUDE_NAME} with nothing) i used ${NAMES//${EXCLUDE_NAME}} (replace nothing with ${EXCLUDE_NAME} ??), which is fo course wrong. You may want to try again with Solaris as, alas, my trusted old U05 seems not to work any more.

@apmcd74:
Please notice that when you define a variable with:

Code:

cname=( word1 word2 word3 [...] )

you create an array, not a string. The parameter expansion ${cname/searchword/replacement} deals with strings though. i.e.

Code:

variable="++old++"
echo ${variable/old/NEW}
++NEW++

bakunin

Thanks for the reply. Appreciate it.

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Gave a thumbs up as well. Definitely appreciate the feedback and excellent discussion.

My point was that you can do string manipulation per element, or for all elements in an array of strings, thus:

Code:

$ array=( john paul george ringo )
$ echo ${array[0]/h/}
jon
$ for btl in ${array[@]^}
> do
>   echo $btl
> done
John
Paul
George
Ringo
$

As I said, this works for bash and ksh93 on my Ubuntu systems; I haven't tried it out on ksh88.

Andrew

I'm happy (or should I be sorry?) to be able to correct your humble self-correction: the original expression was NOT wrong but corresponds to the second form quoted below. man ksh:

I pointed out earlier that // means "global". That makes sense because an empty search would not make sense.
Now RudiC opened my eyes for the /# and /% modifiers. Again, makes sense!

OMG bash-4 comes with even more modifiers:

Code:

 array=( john paul george ringo )
 for btl in ${array[@]}; do echo "$btl"; done 
john
paul
george
ringo
 for btl in ${array[@]^}; do echo "$btl"; done
John
Paul
George
Ringo
 for btl in ${array[@]^^}; do echo "$btl"; done
JOHN
PAUL
GEORGE
RINGO