Bash remove first and last characters from a string

You can do

string="|abcdefg|"
string2=${string#"|"}
string2=${string2%"|"}
echo $string2

Or if your string length is constant, you can do

string="|abcdefg|"
string2=${string:1:7}
echo $string2

Also, this should work

echo "|abcdefg|" | cut -d "|" -f 2

Also this

echo "|abcdefg|" | sed 's/^|\(.*\)|$/\1/'

Here's a solution that is independent of the length of the string (bash):

string="|abcdefg|"
echo "${string:1:${#string}-2}"

Going off a few posts listed here it seems the simplest way to do it is:

string="|abcdefg|"
echo ${string:1:-1}

edit: works on ubuntu with bash 4.2; does not work on centOS with bash 4.1

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