hi everyone,

can someone tell me what this means? i know what it does but i don't
understand why

VARIABLE = "something sometime"

echo ${VARIABLE#something}

output:
sometime

but what's this supposed to mean?

~ Krish

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siddharthkrish@gmail.com wrote:
> hi everyone,
>
> can someone tell me what this means? i know what it does but i don't
> understand why
>
> VARIABLE = "something sometime"
>
> echo ${VARIABLE#something}
>
> output:
>  sometime
>
> but what's this supposed to mean?
>
> ~ Krish
>

Look up "parameter substitution" in your shell man page.

Ed.

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Ed Morton wrote:
> siddharthkrish@gmail.com wrote: 
>
> Look up "parameter substitution" in your shell man page.
>
> 	Ed.
This is useful for string concatenation.
For example, echo $VARIABLE  in your case will print "something
sometime".
What if you want to print "something sometimenow"?
echo $VARIABLEnow won't work as the shell will go looking for a new
variable VARIABLEnow  and will end up printing nothing, as this var has
not been initialized.
echo $VARIABLE now will add an extra space between sometime and now.
echo ${VARIABLE}now  will print what you want: string concatenation
with no spaces in between. This works due to shell expansion ONLY for
VARIABLE.
As for echo ${VARIABLE#something}, a wiser head than mine should
answer.
Sashi

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In article <1136895825.680529.120100@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
siddharthkrish@gmail.com wrote:
> hi everyone,
>
> can someone tell me what this means? i know what it does but i don't
> understand why
>
> VARIABLE = "something sometime"

This in not valid, although the below would be:

VARIABLE="something sometime"

> echo ${VARIABLE#something}
>
> output:
>  sometime
>
> but what's this supposed to mean?

Others have already answered the question...

Kevin

--
Unix Guy Consulting, LLC
Unix and Linux Automation, Shell, PERL and CGI scripting
http://www.unix-guy.com

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Kevin Collins wrote:
> In article <1136895825.680529.120100@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
> siddharthkrish@gmail.com wrote: 
>
> This in not valid, although the below would be:
>
>  VARIABLE="something sometime"
> 
>
> Others have already answered the question...
>
> Kevin
>
> --
> Unix Guy Consulting, LLC
> Unix and Linux Automation, Shell, PERL and CGI scripting
> http://www.unix-guy.com

This link explains it all:
http://www.faqs.org/docs/abs/HTML/p...bstitution.html
Sashi

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