Shell script - remove first and last quote (") from a variable

Question

Below is the snippet of a shell script from a larger script. It removes the quotes from the string that is held by a variable. I am doing it using sed, but is it efficient?

Answer 1

This is the most discrete way without using sed:

x='"fish"'
printf "   quotes: %s\nno quotes:  %s\n" "$x" "${x//\"/}"

Or

echo $x
echo ${x//\"/}

Output:

   quotes: "fish"
no quotes:  fish

I got this from a source.