Shell parameter expansion working in ksh but not in bash

Question

Why does the following code produce different output in ksh and bash

p="folderA/folderB/folderC"
echo ${p%%+([^/])}
echo ${p#${p%%+([^/])}}

ksh outputs:

folderA/folderB/
folderC

bash outputs:

folderA/folderB/folderC

I'm especially confused because I used the bash documentation to create this parameter expansion.

I want to extract the folder name after the last slash. I found another way which is working in ksh and bash:

echo ${p##*/}

but I would like to understand why the first approach is not working.

Answer 1

+(...) is extended glob syntax, you need to enable extglob feature for bash to understand it. And as stated in the other answer , normally a circumflex shouldn't be used for negating a character class. Bash tolerates this mistake, but anyways let's use the correct syntax for the sake of portability:

shopt -s extglob
p="folderA/folderB/folderC"
echo "${p%%+([!/])}"
echo "${p#${p%%+([!/])}}"

yields:

folderA/folderB/
folderC

Related link: Bash Reference Manual § Pattern Matching .

---

And btw, you don't really need extended globs for this.

p="folderA/folderB/folderC"
echo "${p%${p##*/}}"
echo "${p##*/}"

Above script works just as well on any POSIX-compliant shell.

Answer 2

Another, more standards-compliant, Korn shell actually outputs

folderA/folderB/folderC

followed by an empty line. This is because shell globs are not regular expressions, and the character class negotiation operator is a false friend.

In POSIX shell, [^/] is actually unspecified but normally ( ["^"/] is more clear) means “either ^ or / ” but you will want “anything that's not / ” which, in POSIX shell globs, is [!/] instead.

See the other answer for an explanation on how GNU bash needs shopt -s extglob to support Korn shell-compatible extended globbing patterns in addition.