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One problem with using the truncate operator for string matching is case matching.

In the truncate operator example, ${foo%%*ATE} matches SENATE.


DALEK$ foo=SENATE
DALEK$ if [ '' = "${foo%%*ATE}" ] ; then echo "$foo! $foo!"; fi
SENATE! SENATE!
DALEK$


It will not match Senate because ate and ATE are different cases.


DALEK$ foo=Senate
DALEK$ if [ '' = "${foo%%*ATE}" ] ; then echo "$foo! $foo!"; fi
DALEK$


While creating materials for my bash class I needed to create some globbing exercises for my students.

It occurred to me that a string operator and a comparison to the null string can be used to check if something is a substring of another value.

Sure, you can use Substring Expansion to see if the substring is at a known location such as "Does the value of $foo start with 'bar'?", but length and location are often unknown.


$ foo=barfood
$ if [ 'bar' = "${foo:0:3}" ]; then echo $foo; fi
barfood
$


LibrePlanet, the Free Software Foundation's annual technology conference, was a great experience in March.

The conference started with a fantastic keynote from Deb Nicholson, "Free software forever."

I went to my first Tübix this year. Tübingen is a beautiful college town ( Universitätsstadt ) on the Neckar river in southwestern Germany.

I particularly enjoyed the talks on SSH and authentication, both of which led into my talk on privacy and security via a password manager. I picked up a couple new ways of explaining things from the SSH talk and look forward to listening to it again.

Thursday's PLUG meeting for July went well. We had a large crowd for mid-summer including lots of new faces.

Announcements included an opening for teaching electronics at a local community college. The department head showed up, so I handed it over to him for descriptions of the classes and what they need. He's adamant about a GNU/Linux infrastructure being vital to the success of the program and has hired 4 previous instructors from PLUG.