bash: how to check if first character of string is "/"?

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Mon, 2007-10-08 at 02:23 -0400, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> 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.
If you want it portable/bourne-shell compatible, consider "case"

case "$VAR" in
/*)
   ...;;
esac

Ralf