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EXPR(1) 		FreeBSD General Commands Manual 	       EXPR(1)

NAME
     expr -- evaluate expression

SYNOPSIS
     expr expression

DESCRIPTION
     The expr utility evaluates expression and writes the result on standard
     output.

     All operators and operands must be passed as separate arguments.  Several
     of the operators have special meaning to command interpreters and must
     therefore be quoted appropriately.  All integer operands are interpreted
     in base 10.

     Arithmetic operations are performed using signed integer math.

     Operators are listed below in order of increasing precedence; all are
     left-associative.	Operators with equal precedence are grouped within { }
     symbols.

     expr1 | expr2
	     Return the evaluation of expr1 if it is neither an empty string
	     nor zero; otherwise, returns the evaluation of expr2.

     expr1 & expr2
	     Return the evaluation of expr1 if neither expression evaluates to
	     an empty string or zero; otherwise, returns zero.

     expr1 {=, >, >=, <, <=, !=} expr2
	     Return the results of integer comparison if both arguments are
	     integers; otherwise, returns the results of string comparison
	     using the locale-specific collation sequence.  The result of each
	     comparison is 1 if the specified relation is true, or 0 if the
	     relation is false.

     expr1 {+, -} expr2
	     Return the results of addition or subtraction of integer-valued
	     arguments.

     expr1 {*, /, %} expr2
	     Return the results of multiplication, integer division, or
	     remainder of integer-valued arguments.

     expr1 : expr2
	     The ``:'' operator matches expr1 against expr2, which must be a
	     regular expression.  The regular expression is anchored to the
	     beginning of  the string with an implicit ``^''.

	     If the match succeeds and the pattern contains at least one regu-
	     lar expression subexpression ``\(...\)'', the string correspond-
	     ing to ``\1'' is returned; otherwise the matching operator
	     returns the number of characters matched.	If the match fails and
	     the pattern contains a regular expression subexpression the null
	     string is returned; otherwise 0.

     Parentheses are used for grouping in the usual manner.

EXAMPLES
     1.   The following example adds one to the variable a.
		a=`expr $a + 1`

     2.   The following example returns the filename portion of a pathname
	  stored in variable a.  The // characters act to eliminate ambiguity
	  with the division operator.
		expr //$a : '.*/\(.*\)'

     3.   The following example returns the number of characters in variable
	  a.
		expr $a : '.*'

DIAGNOSTICS
     The expr utility exits with one of the following values:
     0	     the expression is neither an empty string nor 0.
     1	     the expression is an empty string or 0.
     2	     the expression is invalid.

SEE ALSO
     sh(1), test(1)

STANDARDS
     The expr utility conforms to IEEE Std 1003.2 (``POSIX.2'').

FreeBSD 4.9			 May 10, 2002			   FreeBSD 4.9

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