Linux: shell builtin string matching

Posted by gmatt on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by gmatt
Published on 2010-04-30T16:39:22Z Indexed on 2010/04/30 16:47 UTC
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linux

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wildcards

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shell

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parsing

I am trying to become more familiar with using the builtin string matching stuff available in shells in linux. I came across this guys posting, and he showed an example

a="abc|def"
echo ${a#*|}    # will yield "def"
echo ${a%|*}    # will yield "abc"

I tried it out and it does what its advertised to do, but I don't understand what the $,{},#,*,| are doing, I tried looking for some reference online or in the manuals but I couldn't find anything. Can anyone explain to me what's going on here?

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