Add prefix and suffix to $@ in bash

Question

How to add suffix and prefix to $@?

If I do $PREFIX/$@/$SUFFIX, I get the prefix and the suffix only in the first parameter.

Answer 1

^{Note: This is essentially a slightly more detailed version of sjam's answer.}

John1024's answer is helpful, but:

• requires a subshell (which involves a child process)
• can result in unwanted globbing applied to the array elements.

Fortunately, Bash parameter expansion can be applied to arrays too, which avoids these issues:

set -- 'one' 'two' # sample input array, which will be reflected in $@

# Copy $@ to new array ${a[@]}, adding a prefix to each element.
# `/#` replaces the string that follows, up to the next `/`,
# at the *start* of each element.
# In the absence of a string, the replacement string following
# the second `/` is unconditionally placed *before* each element.
a=( "${@/#/PREFIX}" )

# Add a suffix to each element of the resulting array ${a[@]}.
# `/%` replaces the string that follows, up to the next `/`,
# at the *end* of each element.
# In the absence of a string, the replacement string following
# the second `/` is unconditionally placed *after* each element.
a=( "${a[@]/%/SUFFIX}" )

# Print the resulting array.
declare -p a

This yields:

declare -a a='([0]="PREFIXoneSUFFIX" [1]="PREFIXtwoSUFFIX")'

Note that double-quoting the array references is crucial to protect their elements from potential word-splitting and globbing (filename expansion) - both of which are instances of shell expansions.