How can I match spaces with a regexp in Bash?

Question

I expect the code below to echo \"yes\", but it does not. For some reason it won\'t match the single quote. Why?

str=\"{templateUrl: \'}\"
regexp=\"templateU         


        

Answer 1

This should work:

#!/bin/bash
str="{templateUrl: '}"
regexp="templateUrl:[[:space:]]*'"

if [[ $str =~ $regexp ]]; then
  echo "yes"
else
  echo "no"
fi

If you want to match zero or more whitespaces the * needs to added after [[:space:]].