There are two common ways to replace specific text in strings in Bash:
Method 1: Replace First Occurrence of Text
my_string=${my_string/basketball/football}
This particular example will replace the first occurrence of the string “basketball” with the string “football” in the variable named $my_string.
Method 2: Replace All Occurrences of Text
my_string=${my_string//basketball/football}
This particular example will replace all occurrences of the string “basketball” with the string “football” in the variable named $my_string.
Note that the only difference between this example and the previous one is that we used double slashes ( // ) after the variable name to indicate that we’d like to replace all occurrences of a specific string.
The following examples show how to use each method in practice.
Example 1: Replace First Occurrence of Text in String in Bash
Suppose that we create a variable in Bash that contains the following string:
- “I think basketball is a wonderful sport”
Suppose that we would like to replace “basketball” with “football” so that the new string contains the following:
- “I think football is a wonderful sport”
We can use the following syntax to do so:
$my_string="I think basketball is a wonderful sport"
my_string=${my_string/basketball/football}
The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:
Notice that “basketball” has been replaced with “football” in the variable named $my_string.
If you would like to simply remove the text “basketball” from the string then you can replace the text with nothing instead:
$my_string="I think basketball is a wonderful sport"
my_string=${my_string/basketball/}
The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:
Notice that “basketball” has simply been removed from the string.
Note: This method is case-sensitive.
Example 2: Replace All Occurrences of Text in String in Bash
Suppose that we create a variable in Bash that contains the following string:
- “basketball is great and basketball is fun”
Suppose that we would like to replace each occurrence of “basketball” with “football” so that the new string contains the following:
- “football is great and football is fun”
We can use the following syntax to do so:
$my_string="basketball is great and basketball is fun"
my_string=${my_string//basketball/football}
The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:
Notice that each occurrence of “basketball” has been replaced with “football” in the variable named $my_string.
Related Tutorials
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in Bash:
Bash: How to Replace Multiple Characters in String
Bash: How to Replace Special Characters in String
Bash: How to Replace Specific Line in File
