Check if String starts with Specific Prefix in Bash

Bash – Check if string starts with specific prefix

To check if a string starts with specific prefix string in Bash scripting, you can use the following condition.

$string1 == $prefix*

where string1 is a whole string, and prefix is a prefix string.

If the string string1 starts with prefix string, then the above expression returns true, else it returns false.

Example

In the following script, we take two strings in string1 and prefix, and check if string string1 starts with the prefix.

example.sh

#! /bin/bash

string1="hello world"
prefix="hello"

if [[ $string1 == $prefix* ]]; then
  echo "String starts with prefix"
else
  echo "String does not start with prefix"
fi

Output

sh-3.2# ./example.sh 
String starts with prefix

References

Bash If Else

Conclusion

In this Bash Tutorial, we learned how to check if a string starts with a specific prefix string.