Bash string starting with ">"

Question

I need to check if a word is starting with ">" character or not

for example A=">abcd" should return true, B="assdf" should not.

I Tried the following snippets but it does not work

if [ "$A" == "\>*" ]; then
    echo "True"
fi

The following does not work also

A=">dfssdfsd"
    if [[ "$A" =~ "\>*" ]]; then
    echo "aaa"
fi

Thank you

Why is this duplicate, > is a special character, I already looked over that answer it does not answer to my question. — Ionut Cosmin Mihai, Mar 15 '16 at 14:10
All of the answers in the duplicate work for your problem, therefore it is a duplicate. A single character difference is not a new question. If your question is how to escape special characters then ask that. — 123, Mar 15 '16 at 14:19
As 123 mentioned not to double-quote the RegEx, you also do not need to use double-quotes on `$A` when using double square brackets, e.g., `A="> dfssdfsd"; [[ $A =~ ^\>* ]] && echo "Yes"` will answer `Yes` as the space in `"> dfssdfsd"` will not split inside of double square brackets. Note that I know `$A` in the example is `>dfssdfsd` without a space and my example is to show that there is no splitting when inside double square brackets and therefore why `$A` does not need to be quoted either. — user3439894, Mar 15 '16 at 15:12

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 15 '16 at 14:08

0

You can use the following :

expr "$A" : '>'

$ if [ 0 -ne $(expr 'test' : '>') ]; then echo "True"; else echo "False"; fi
False
$ if [ 0 -ne $(expr '>test' : '>') ]; then echo "True"; else echo "False"; fi
True

answered Mar 15 '16 at 14:08

Aaron

24,009
2
33
57

Bash string starting with ">"

1 Answers1