Following syntax deletes the shortest match of $substring from front of $string
${string#substring}
Following syntax deletes the shortest match of $substring from back of $string
${string%substring}
Following sample shell script explains the above two shortest substring match concepts.
$ cat shortest.sh
#! /bin/bash
filename="bash.string.txt"
echo ${filename#*.}
echo ${filename%.*}
$ ./shortest.sh
After deletion of shortest match from front: string.txt
After deletion of shortest match from back: bash.string
In the first echo statement substring ‘*.’ matches the characters and a dot, and # strips from the front of the string, so it strips the substring “bash.” from the variable called filename. In second echo statement substring ‘.*’ matches the substring starts with dot, and % strips from back of the string, so it deletes the substring ‘.txt’
