When do we need curly braces around shell variables?

Question

In shell scripts, when do we use {} when expanding variables?

For example, I have seen the following:

var=10        # Declare variable

         


        

Answer 1

Curly braces are always needed for accessing array elements and carrying out brace expansion.

It's good to be not over-cautious and use {} for shell variable expansion even when there is no scope for ambiguity.

For example:

dir=log
prog=foo
path=/var/${dir}/${prog}      # excessive use of {}, not needed since / can't be a part of a shell variable name
logfile=${path}/${prog}.log   # same as above, . can't be a part of a shell variable name
path_copy=${path}             # {} is totally unnecessary
archive=${logfile}_arch       # {} is needed since _ can be a part of shell variable name

So, it is better to write the three lines as:

path=/var/$dir/$prog
logfile=$path/$prog.log
path_copy=$path

which is definitely more readable.

Since a variable name can't start with a digit, shell doesn't need {} around numbered variables (like $1, $2 etc.) unless such expansion is followed by a digit. That's too subtle and it does make to explicitly use {} in such contexts:

set app      # set $1 to app
fruit=$1le   # sets fruit to apple, but confusing
fruit=${1}le # sets fruit to apple, makes the intention clear

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See:

• Allowed characters in Linux environment variable names