Brace expansion in Bash

Brace expansion is a mechanism that is used to put together strings to use as part of a command. It is often used to reduce the amount of typing.

How does it work?

A pattern that should be brace-expanded consists of a so called preamble, an opening {, one or more comma-separated strings, a closing } , and finally a postscript. Both the preamble and the postscript are optional.

Brace expansion works by prefixing the preamble to each of the strings between the curly braces followed by the postscript. It works from left to right and maintains the order in which the strings between the curly braces were given.

In the following example the preamble 'foo' will be prefixed to both the strings 'bar' and 'baz' and the postscript 'quux' is added to both strings.

$ echo foo{bar,baz}quux
foobarquux foobazquux

It is also possible to use the empty string as an option between the curly braces.

$ echo foo{,bar}quux
fooquux foobarquux
$ echo foo{bar,}quux
foobarquux fooquux

How is it useful?

Simply put, it saves typing. The preamble and the postscript only need to be typed once.

To create multiple (nested) directories with just one command you can use the following.

$ mkdir -p project/component/{test,src,dist,lib}

This will create the following directory structure

project/component/test/
project/component/src/
project/component/dist/
project/component/lib/

(Because mkdir was given the -p parameter the necessary parent directories 'project' and 'component' were also created if they did not already exist.)

To rename files without having to type a long pathname more than once.

$ mv project/component/src/{index,main}.js

Or if you forgot an extension, add it using brace expansion. Notice the empty string being used as an option.

$ mv project/component/src/index{,.js}