Return a regex match in a Bash script, instead of replacing it

Question

I just want to match some text in a Bash script. I\'ve tried using sed but I can\'t seem to make it just output the match instead of replacing it with something.

Answer 1

I don't know why nobody ever uses expr: it's portable and easy.

newName()
{
 #Get input from function
 newNameTXT="$1"

 if num=`expr "$newNameTXT" : '[^0-9]*\([0-9]\+\)'`; then
  echo "contains $num"
 fi
}