Re: How to match regex in bash? (any character)

[Greg Wooledge]

On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 11:18:57AM -0500, Peng Yu wrote:
> Also, regex(3) does not mention the difference between $x =~ xxxx.txt
> and $x=~ "xxxx.txt". I think that the difference should be addressed
> in man bash.

It already is.

           An additional binary operator, =~, is available, with the same
           precedence as == and !=.  When it is used, the string to the
           right of the operator is considered an extended regular
           expression and matched accordingly (as in regex(3)). The return
           value is 0 if the string matches the pattern, and 1 otherwise.
           If the regular expression is syntactically incorrect, the
           conditional expression's return value is 2.  If the shell option
           nocasematch is enabled, the match is performed without regard to
           the case of alphabetic characters.  Any part of the pattern may
           be quoted to force it to be matched as a string.

The last sentence in the quote above.

> Bottom line, regex(3) is not a good manpage to refer in the above
> sentence.

Maybe it's not a good one, but it is the only *possible* one.