How to Concatenate Strings in Bash

Concatenating strings can be an important part of using any programming language for practical applications.

You can concatenate strings in bash as well. There is no concatenation operator here. Just write the strings one after another to join strings in Bash.

concat_string="$str1$str2"

Don't worry! I’ll show you various actual examples to concatenate strings in bash.

Assigning concatenated strings

There are no data types in Bash like you have in most programming languages. But you can still declare variables in Bash.

Here is how you assign strings in Bash:

avimanyu@linuxhandbook:~$ w='Welcome'

You can use printf command to print the value of this string variable:

avimanyu@linuxhandbook:~$ printf "$w\n"
Welcome

Let's create some more strings:

avimanyu@linuxhandbook:~$ t='To'
avimanyu@linuxhandbook:~$ l='Linux'
avimanyu@linuxhandbook:~$ h='Handbook!'

I want to combine all these string variables into a single one. How to do that?

avimanyu@linuxhandbook:~$ tony="${w} ${t} ${l} ${h}"

In this manner, I have concatenated all four strings into a single variable and named it tony. Do note that I have added a space between the variables.

Let's quickly confirm that the strings have been combined:

avimanyu@linuxhandbook:~$ printf "$tony\n"
Welcome To Linux Handbook!

Here's all of it in a Bash Script:

#!/bin/bash
w='Welcome'
t='To'
l='Linux'
h='Handbook'
tony="${w} ${t} ${l} ${h}"
printf "${tony}\n"

Make it executable and run it as a script:

avimanyu@linuxhandbook:~$ chmod +x concat.sh
avimanyu@linuxhandbook:~$ ./concat.sh
Welcome To Linux Handbook!

Append to string in bash

The above example combines different strings into one.

Let's take another scenario. Say, you want to append to an already existing string. How to do that? You use the wonderful += operator.

str="iron"
str+="man"

Can you guess the new value of str? Yes! It is ironman.

avimanyu@linuxhandbook:~$ str="iron"
avimanyu@linuxhandbook:~$ str+="man"
avimanyu@linuxhandbook:~$ echo $str
ironman

This is helpful when you are using loops in bash. Take this for loop for example:

#!/bin/bash

var=""
for color in 'Black' 'White' 'Brown' 'Yellow'; do
  var+="${color} "
done

echo "$var"

If you run the above script, it will append to the string after each iteration.

Black White Brown Yellow

Concatenate numbers and strings

As I mentioned previously, there are no data types in Bash. Strings and integers are the same and hence they can be easily joined in a single string.

Let us look at another example through a second script. This time, I'll use a number:

#!/bin/bash
we='We'
lv='Love'
y='You'
morgan=3000
stark="${we} ${lv} ${y} ${morgan}!!!"
printf "${stark}\n"

Execution:

avimanyu@linuxhandbook:~$ chmod +x morgan.sh
avimanyu@linuxhandbook:~$ ./morgan.sh
We Love You 3000!!!

Nested concatenation of strings

You can also store those two concatenated strings inside a third one through nested concatenation:

#!/bin/bash
w='Welcome'
t='To'
l='Linux'
h='Handbook'
tony="${w} ${t} ${l} ${h}"
we='We'
lv='Love'
y='You'
morgan=3000
stark="${we} ${lv} ${y} ${morgan}!!!"
ironman="${tony}..${stark}"
printf "${ironman} Forever!\n"

When you run this shell script, you'll see this output:

Welcome To Linux Handbook..We Love You 3000!!! Forever!

Conclusion

If you are new to shell scripting, I highly recommend our Bash tutorial series for beginners.

Bash Tutorials for Beginners: Start Learning Bash Scripting

Here’s a collection of bash tutorials that will teach you bash shell scripting from the beginning. You’ll learn all the basics of bash scripting.

Linux HandbookAhmed Alkabary

I hope this quick little tutorial helped you in concatenating bash strings. If you have questions or suggestions, feel free to leave a comment below.