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

My version

strip_quotes() {
    while [[ $# -gt 0 ]]; do
        local value=${!1}
        local len=${#value}
        [[ ${value:0:1} == \" && ${value:$len-1:1} == \" ]] && declare -g $1="${value:1:$len-2}"
        shift
    done
}

The function accepts variable name(s) and strips quotes in place. It only strips a matching pair of leading and trailing quotes. It doesn't check if the trailing quote is escaped (preceded by \ which is not itself escaped).

In my experience, general-purpose string utility functions like this (I have a library of them) are most efficient when manipulating the strings directly, not using any pattern matching and especially not creating any sub-shells, or calling any external tools such as sed, awk or grep.

var1="\"test \\ \" end \""
var2=test
var3=\"test
var4=test\"
echo before:
for i in var{1,2,3,4}; do
    echo $i="${!i}"
done
strip_quotes var{1,2,3,4}
echo
echo after:
for i in var{1,2,3,4}; do
    echo $i="${!i}"
done