Holy shit, bash string manipulation.

Is it just me, or is Bash string manipulation the most god-awful ugly piece of shit there is? I mean, it's functional and everything, but it's like writing your script in Brainfuck. I wanted to make it change "/(letter)/stuff/shit" to "letter:\stuff\shit". Here's what it looked like:


${i//\/[a-zA-Z]\//${i:1:1}\:\\}

I couldn't do that again if I wanted to.

                    dicks
                   /     \
                  /       \
               dicks     dicks
               /   \     /   \
              /     *   /     \
           dicks      dicks  dicks
           /   \     /    \  /   \
          *   dicks *     * *    dicks