I want to know which method is better to check if a var (input by user on keyboard) matches with a regex in a case insensitive way. I know there are some different possibilities. Example: I want a regex matching an empty value and all of this list: Y
, N
, y
, n
, Yes
, No
, YES
, NO
I searched looking different methods. Not sure if could be another better. I'll put a couple of them working for me.
First one is a little "tricky" setting all to uppercase for the comparison:
#!/bin/bash
yesno="null" #any different value for initialization is valid
while [[ ! ${yesno^^} =~ ^[YN]$|^YES$|^NO$|^$ ]]; do
read -r yesno
done
Second one is using shopt -s nocasematch
. But not sure if after doing that it can be reverted because I don't want to set this for all the script.
#!/bin/bash
yesno="null" #any different value for initialization is valid
shopt -s nocasematch
while [[ ! ${yesno} =~ ^[yn]$|^yes$|^no$|^$ ]]; do
read -r yesno
done
Can these regex get improved in any way? Is there a better (more elegant) method? On second method, is there a way to revert that setting?
shopt
is good approach as you are able to retain originally entered value in variable yesno
.
You can just refactor your regex a bit:
#!/bin/bash
yesno="null"
# set nocasematch option
shopt -s nocasematch
while [[ ! ${yesno} =~ ^([yn]|yes|no)?$ ]]; do
read -r -p "Enter a yes/no value: " yesno
done
# unset nocasematch option
shopt -u nocasematch
# examine your variable
declare -p yesno