Regex matches bash variable

Question

I am trying to change a bash script. The current script contains

print "<div class=\"title\">" $1 "</div>" 

Where $1 might look like this:

 Apprentice Historian (Level 1) Historian (Level 4) Master Historian (Level 7) 

What I would like to do is add an image called a “base” value. I had something like this:

 print "<div class=\"icon\"><imgsrc=\"icons\" $1 ".png\"></div><div class=\"title\">" $1 "</div>" 

However, in this case, I would like $1 return Historian . I thought I could use a regex to match $1 and keep only the part I need.

 (Apprentice|Master)?\s(.*)\s(\(Level \d\)) 

I know that my regular expression is not quite there, ideally the student / master will be in his own group of matches and not tied to the base. And I do not know how to match the argument of $1 .

Answer 1

Using regex matching in bash:

 for a in 'Apprentice Historian (Level 1)' 'Historian (Level 4)' 'Master Historian (Level 7)' ; do set "$a" echo " === $1 ===" [[ $1 =~ (Apprentice|Master)?' '?(.*)' ('Level' '[0-9]+')' ]] \ && echo ${BASH_REMATCH[${#BASH_REMATCH[@]}-1]} done 

The hard part is getting the correct member from BASH_REMATCH. Bash does not support non-capturing parentheses, so Historian is under 1 or 2. Fortunately, we know this is the last.

Answer 2

Clean Shell Samples:

 a="Historian (Level 1)" noParens=${a/ \(*/} lastWord=${noParens/[A-Za-z]* /} a="Muster Historian (Level 1)" noParens=${a/ \(*/} lastWord=${noParens/[A-Za-z]* /} 

(These are the same expressions in both cases, just repeating for easy testing).

Answer 3

Based on "And I Don't Know How to Match the $ 1 Argument."

Did I understand you correctly if you ask if your regular expression is correct, but how to match the contents of your bash variable?

 matched_text=$(echo $yourbashvariablecontainingthetext | sed 's/your_regex/backreference_etc/') 

$ yourbashvariablecontextthetext should be your $ 1