<> == I want to check if [[ $var == foo || $var == bar || $var == more ]] without repeating $var n times. == The portable solution uses `case`: {{{ # Bourne case $var in foo|bar|more) ... ;; esac }}} In Bash and ksh, [[glob|Extended globs]] can also do this within a `[[` command: {{{ # bash/ksh if [[ $var == @(foo|bar|more) ]]; then ... fi }}} Extended globs are turned on by default inside the `[[` command in bash 4.1 and newer. If you need to target an older version of bash, you will need to turn them on in your script (`shopt -s extglob` outside of all functions or compound commands). Alternatively, you may loop over a list of patterns, checking each individually. {{{ #!/usr/bin/env bash # bash/ksh93 [[ -v BASH_VERSION ]] && shopt -s extglob # usage: pmatch string pattern [ pattern ... ] function any { [[ -n $1 ]] || return typeset pat match=$1 shift for pat; do [[ $match == $pat ]] && return done return 1 } var='foo bar' if any "$var" '@(bar|baz)' foo\* blarg; then echo 'var matched at least one of the patterns!' fi }}} For logical conjunction (return true if `$var` matches all patterns), ksh93 can use the `&` pattern delimiter. {{{ # ksh93 only [[ $var == @(foo&bar&more) ]] && ... }}} For shells that support only the ksh88 subset (extglob patterns), you may [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeMorgan%27s_Law | DeMorganify]] the logic using the negation sub-pattern operator. {{{ # bash/ksh88/etc... [[ $var == !(!(foo)|!(bar)|!(more)) ]] && ... }}} But this is quite unclear and not much shorter than just writing out separate expressions for each pattern. ---- CategoryShell