How to determine if string is a substring to another string

Question

I'm trying to determine if a substring (a file name) is present in a large string containing many file paths. This is my code which just doesn't work (prints "Does not contain"). I tried comparing with =~, different quotes usages. Nothing from that seems to work. Do you please see a problem in my code?

#!/bin/bash

text="/path/to/some/file1-2-3.json /another/path/to/file4-5-6.json"
my_file="file1-2-3.json"

if [[ *"$my_file"* == "$text" ]]; then
    echo "Contain"
else
    echo "Does not contain"
fi

MarcoLucidi · Accepted Answer · 2020-11-17 18:52:57Z

1

it works if you invert the strings:

$ more script.sh
#!/bin/bash

text="/path/to/some/file1-2-3.json /another/path/to/file4-5-6.json"
my_file="file1-2-3.json"

if [[ "$text" == *"$my_file"* ]]; then
        echo "Contain"
else
        echo "Does not contain"
fi
$ ./script.sh
Contain
$

form man bash:

When the == and != operators are used, the string to the right of the operator is considered a pattern and matched according to the rules described below under Pattern Matching...

edited Nov 17, 2020 at 18:52

answered Nov 17, 2020 at 18:51

MarcoLucidi

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1 Comment

T.Poe Over a year ago

I was just writing my own question as I've just found out. What an unpleasant bug! :-D Thx

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