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I've got this little script in sh (Mac OSX 10.6) to look through an array of files. Google has stopped being helpful at this point:

files="*.jpg"
for f in $files
    do
        echo $f | grep -oEi '[0-9]+_([a-z]+)_[0-9a-z]*'
        name=$?
        echo $name
    done

So far (obviously, to you shell gurus) $name merely holds 0, 1 or 2, depending on if grep found that the filename matched the matter provided. What I'd like is to capture what's inside the parens ([a-z]+) and store that to a variable.

I'd like to use grep only, if possible. If not, please no Python or Perl, etc. sed or something like it – I would like to attack this from the *nix purist angle.

Also, as a super-cool bonus, I'm curious as to how I can concatenate string in shell? Is the group I captured was the string "somename" stored in $name, and I wanted to add the string ".jpg" to the end of it, could I cat $name '.jpg'?

I've got this script in sh (macOS 10.6) to look through an array of files:

files="*.jpg"
for f in $files
    do
        echo $f | grep -oEi '[0-9]+_([a-z]+)_[0-9a-z]*'
        name=$?
        echo $name
    done

So far $name merely holds 0, 1 or 2, depending on if grep found that the filename matched the matter provided. What I'd like is to capture what's inside the parens ([a-z]+) and store that to a variable.

I'd like to use grep only, if possible. If not, please no Python or Perl, etc. sed or something like it – I would like to attack this from the *nix purist angle.

I've got this little script in sh (Mac OSX 10.6) to look through an array of files. Google has stopped being helpful at this point:

files="*.jpg"
for f in $files
    do
        echo $f | grep -oEi '[0-9]+_([a-z]+)_[0-9a-z]*'
        name=$?
        echo $name
    done

So far (obviously, to you shell gurus) $name merely holds 0, 1 or 2, depending on if grep found that the filename matched the matter provided. What I'd like is to capture what's inside the parens ([a-z]+) and store that to a variable.

I'd like to use grep only, if possible. If not, please no Python or Perl, etc. sed or something like it – I'm new to shell and would like to attack this from the *nix purist angle.

Also, as a super-cool bonus, I'm curious as to how I can concatenate string in shell? Is the group I captured was the string "somename" stored in $name, and I wanted to add the string ".jpg" to the end of it, could I cat $name '.jpg'?

Please explain what's going on, if you've got the time.

I've got this little script in sh (Mac OSX 10.6) to look through an array of files. Google has stopped being helpful at this point:

files="*.jpg"
for f in $files
    do
        echo $f | grep -oEi '[0-9]+_([a-z]+)_[0-9a-z]*'
        name=$?
        echo $name
    done

So far (obviously, to you shell gurus) $name merely holds 0, 1 or 2, depending on if grep found that the filename matched the matter provided. What I'd like is to capture what's inside the parens ([a-z]+) and store that to a variable.

I'd like to use grep only, if possible. If not, please no Python or Perl, etc. sed or something like it – I would like to attack this from the *nix purist angle.

Also, as a super-cool bonus, I'm curious as to how I can concatenate string in shell? Is the group I captured was the string "somename" stored in $name, and I wanted to add the string ".jpg" to the end of it, could I cat $name '.jpg'?

I've got this little script in sh (Mac OSX 10.6) to look through an array of files. Google has stopped being helpful at this point:

files="*.jpg"
for f in $files
    do
        echo $f | grep -oEi '[0-9]+_([a-z]+)_[0-9a-z]*'
        name=$?
        echo $name
    done

So far (obviously, to you shell gurus) $name merely holds 0, 1 or 2, depending on if grep found that the filename matched the matter provided. What I'd like is to capture what's inside the parens ([a-z]+) and store that to a variable.

I'd like to use grep only, if possible. If not, please no Python or Perl, etc. sed or something like it – I'm new to shell and would like to attack this from the *nix purist angle.

Also, as a super-cool bonus, I'm curious as to how I can concatenate string in shell? Is the group I captured was the string "somename" stored in $name, and I wanted to add the string ".jpg" to the end of it, could I cat $name '.jpg'?

Thanks! And please explain what's going on, if you've got the time.

I've got this little script in sh (Mac OSX 10.6) to look through an array of files. Google has stopped being helpful at this point:

files="*.jpg"
for f in $files
    do
        echo $f | grep -oEi '[0-9]+_([a-z]+)_[0-9a-z]*'
        name=$?
        echo $name
    done

So far (obviously, to you shell gurus) $name merely holds 0, 1 or 2, depending on if grep found that the filename matched the matter provided. What I'd like is to capture what's inside the parens ([a-z]+) and store that to a variable.

I'd like to use grep only, if possible. If not, please no Python or Perl, etc. sed or something like it – I'm new to shell and would like to attack this from the *nix purist angle.

Also, as a super-cool bonus, I'm curious as to how I can concatenate string in shell? Is the group I captured was the string "somename" stored in $name, and I wanted to add the string ".jpg" to the end of it, could I cat $name '.jpg'?

Please explain what's going on, if you've got the time.