bash expansion question

Khannie

Can some explain this to me please?

path=/home/user/filename.txt
echo ${path##*/}

prints "filename.txt".

This is exactly what I want, but I have no idea how or why it works and I'm a curious cat.

NotMe

Here.. from 'man bash':

${parameter#word}
${parameter##word}
The word is expanded to produce a pattern just as in pathname
expansion. If the pattern matches the beginning of the 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.

so it's $path with the longest matching pattern for */ (any number of chars followed by a / ) deleted.

Khannie

Fair play to ye. Didn't think to check the man pages tbh. Just didn't expect it to be in there. It's quite the read.

E39MSport

echo "`basename $path`" does the same thing if you are looking to remove the path and print the file name only. You can also use `basename $ path .txt` to print the filename without the file extension.

Khannie

The bash substitution is very powerful. Been reading up / fluting with it today.