Robert P. J. Day wrote: > it's late so i'm sure i'm just being dense in not knowing this, but > is there a simpler way to check if the first character of a string is > a "/" rather than the cumbersome: > > if [ "x${VAR##/*}" = "x" ] ; then ... > How about using Bash substring expansion: if [ "x${VAR:0:1}" = "x" ] ; then ...