Why does BASH_REMATCH not work for a quoted regular expression?

Question

The code is like this:

#!/bin/bash
if [[ foobarbletch =~ \'foo(bar)bl(.*)\' ]]
 then
     echo \"The regex matches!\"
     echo $BASH_REMATCH
     echo ${BAS         


        

Answer 1

In your bash REGEX, you should remove quotes. That's why that doesn't work.

If you have space, I recommend to use this way :

#!/bin/bash
x='foo bar bletch'
if [[ $x =~ foo[[:space:]](bar)[[:space:]]bl(.*) ]]
then
    echo The regex matches!
    echo $BASH_REMATCH      
    echo ${BASH_REMATCH[1]} 
    echo ${BASH_REMATCH[2]} 
fi