Programming :: Nontrivial String Replacement With Bash On-board Means?

My simple bash-script replaces --> by the HTML-entity for the right arrow. To be precise, it replaces --*> by → Until now, I used sed, for example:

Code: $ flight='AMS --> JFK'
$ echo "$flight" | sed -e 's/ --*> / → /g'

AMS → JFK With sed, -* matches zero or more dashes, because for sed the * is the Kleene Star matching zero or more instances of the previous element. So with sed, --*> matches exactly what I want:

Code:

->
-->
--->
---->

Because sed seems oversized for that task, I played around to accomplish the same with on-board means of bash without using sed. On first thought, this line looks like doing the same but it isn't:

Code: $ flight='AMS --> JFK'
$ echo "${flight// --*> / → }"

AMS → JFK As I recently learnt in this forum, this * isn't the Kleene Star. It is a multi-character wildcard matching any zero or more consecutive characters. So here, --*> matches:

Code:

->
-->
--->
---->
-<>
->>

-abc> And if you continue your flight to SEA, then the result is totally wrong because the * matches greedily:

Code: $ flight='AMS --> JFK --> SEA' $ echo "${flight// --*> / → }" AMS → SEA

The sed line above would produce the correct result and would match the dashes correctly.