Text manipulation idioms in linux

awk: select columns
sed: stream editor (operations like select, substitute, add/delete lines, modify)
sed expressions can be separated by ";"
sed can substitute all occurrences with 'g' modified at the end: 's/(find)/(replace)/g'

# https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/92187/setting-ifs-for-a-single-statement

# arg I/O
$@: unpack all input args
$*: join all inputs as ONE arg, separated by FIRST character of IFS (empty space if unspecified)

# Remember the double quotes around "$*" or "$array[*]" usages or else IFS won't function

array[@]: entire array
${array[@]}: unpacks entire array into MULTIPLE arguments
${array[*]}: join entire array into ONE argument separated by FIRST character of IFS (defaults to an empty space if unspecified)
( IFS=$'\n'; echo "${my_array[*]}" )

${#str}: length of string
${#array[@]}: length of array
${#array[@]:start:after_stop}: select array[start] ... array[after_stop-1]

${str:="my_string"}: initializes variable str with "my_string" (useful for side-effect)

$(str##my_pattern}: delete front matching my_pattern
${str%%my_pattern}: deletes tail matching my_pattern (can use one % instead)
$(str%?}: delete last character (the my_pattern is a single character wildcard "?")

$( whatever_command ): captures stdout created by running whatever_command
( $str ): tokenize to string array, governed by IFS (specify delimiter)
( $( whatever_command ) ): combines the two operations above: capture stdout from command and tokenize the results

# https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/92187/setting-ifs-for-a-single-statement
function strjoin { local IFS="$1"; shift; echo "$*"; }

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