Bash - trim leading/trailing whitespace without having to resort to a tr/sed/awk/etc. pipe, using the "extglob" feature: # turn it on shopt -s extglob output=" This is a test " # trim leading whitespaces output="${output##*( )}" # trim trailing whitespaces output="${output%%*( )}" echo "=${output}=" # turn it off shopt -u extglob #bash #linux #opensource