Somebody in the thread at some point said:
> it's late so i'm sure i'm just being dense in not knowing this, but
> is there a simpler way to check if the first character of a string is
> a "/" rather than the cumbersome:
>
> if [ "x${VAR##/*}" = "x" ] ; then ...
>
> surely there must be *something* that doesn't look quite so grotesque.
How about
if [ "${VAR:0:1}" = "/" ] ; then
-Andy
