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up vote 3 down vote favorite

Suppose we declare 

test="/this/isjust/atestvariable/for/stringoperation"

and we want to replace each instance of '/' with the colon ':'.

Then, I think this command should work:

echo ${test//\/:}

(as ${variable//pattern/string} replaces all matches of the pattern with the specified string )

But, on running echo ${test//\/:}, I get the output as 

/this/isjust/atestvariable/for/stringoperation

Where I could be going wrong? Thank you for your help.

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up vote 5 down vote accepted

escape slash with backslash

echo ${test//\//:}
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up vote 8 down vote

This:

${test//\/:}

would replace all instances (since double-slash // in the start) of /: with nothing (no second unescaped slash).

This:

${test/\//:}

Would replace the first instance (since a single slash as separator) of / (which was escaped) with :.

And this:

${test//\//:}

Should replace all matches of / with a :.

Example:

$ test="/this/isjust/atestvariable/:for/:stringoperation"
$ echo ${test//\/:}
/this/isjust/atestvariableforstringoperation
$ echo ${test/\//:}
:this/isjust/atestvariable/:for/:stringoperation
$ echo ${test//\//:}
:this:isjust:atestvariable::for::stringoperation
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