EXPR(1) User Commands EXPR(1)

expr - evaluate expressions

expr EXPRESSION
expr OPTION

display this help and exit
output version information and exit

Print the value of EXPRESSION to standard output. A blank line below separates increasing precedence groups. EXPRESSION may be:

ARG1 if it is neither null nor 0, otherwise ARG2
ARG1 if neither argument is null or 0, otherwise 0
ARG1 is less than ARG2
ARG1 is less than or equal to ARG2
ARG1 is equal to ARG2
ARG1 is unequal to ARG2
ARG1 is greater than or equal to ARG2
ARG1 is greater than ARG2
arithmetic sum of ARG1 and ARG2
arithmetic difference of ARG1 and ARG2
arithmetic product of ARG1 and ARG2
arithmetic quotient of ARG1 divided by ARG2
arithmetic remainder of ARG1 divided by ARG2
anchored pattern match of REGEXP in STRING
same as STRING : REGEXP
substring of STRING, POS counted from 1
index in STRING where any CHARS is found, or 0
length of STRING
+ TOKEN
interpret TOKEN as a string, even if it is a
keyword like 'match' or an operator like '/'
( EXPRESSION )
value of EXPRESSION

Beware that many operators need to be escaped or quoted for shells. Comparisons are arithmetic if both ARGs are numbers, else lexicographical. Pattern matches return the string matched between \( and \) or null; if \( and \) are not used, they return the number of characters matched or 0.

Exit status is 0 if EXPRESSION is neither null nor 0, 1 if EXPRESSION is null or 0, 2 if EXPRESSION is syntactically invalid, and 3 if an error occurred.

Written by Mike Parker, James Youngman, and Paul Eggert.

GNU coreutils online help: https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/
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Copyright © 2023 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Full documentation https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/expr
or available locally via: info '(coreutils) expr invocation'

January 2024 GNU coreutils 9.4