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

The easiest solution in Bash:

$ s='"abc"'
$ echo $s
"abc"
$ echo "${s:1:-1}"
abc

This is called substring expansion (see Gnu Bash Manual and search for ${parameter:offset:length}). In this example it takes the substring from s starting at position 1 and ending at the second last position. This is due to the fact that if length is a negative value it is interpreted as a backwards running offset from the end of parameter.

Answer 2

There is another way to do it. Like:

echo ${opt:1:-1}

Answer 3

If you try to remove quotes because the Makefile keeps them, try this:

$(subst $\",,$(YOUR_VARIABLE))

Based on another answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/10430975/10452175