$BASH_REMATCH  –  Regular Expression Matches

$BASH_REMATCH is an array and contains the matches of a regular expression.

${BASH_REMATCH[0]} contains the complete match of the regular expression. The remaining elements contain the matches of () subexpressions. For example, ${BASH_REMATCH[1]} contains the match of the 1st () expression, ${BASH_REMATCH[2]} contains the match of the 2nd () expression, and so on.

With Bash, the conditional test operator =~ of [[ ]] evaluates a regular expression.

Links

• Bash manual on $BASH_REMATCH
• Bash manual on the conditional test operator =~

Examples

Print matches of a regular expression with $BASH_REMATCH

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text="name=value with spaces" [[ $text =~ ^([a-z]+)=(.*)$ ]] echo complete match: "${BASH_REMATCH[0]}" echo name: "${BASH_REMATCH[1]}" echo value: "${BASH_REMATCH[2]}"

Output:

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complete match: name=value with spaces name: name value: value with spaces