Or more generally, how do I remove an item from a colon-separated list in a Bash environment variable?

I thought I had seen a simple way to do this years ago, using the more advanced forms of Bash variable expansion, but if so I&#39;ve lost track of it.  A quick search of Google turned up surprisingly few relevant results and none that I would call &quot;simple&quot; or &quot;elegant&quot;.  For example, two methods using sed and awk, respectively:

    PATH=$(echo $PATH | sed -e &#39;s;:\?/home/user/bin;;&#39; -e &#39;s;/home/user/bin:\?;;&#39;)
    PATH=!(awk -F: &#39;{for(i=1;i&lt;=NF;i++){if(!($i in a)){a[$i];printf s$i;s=&quot;:&quot;}}}&#39;&lt;&lt;&lt;$PATH)

Does nothing straightforward exist?  Is there anything analogous to a split() function in Bash?

**Update:**&lt;br/&gt;
It looks like I need to apologize for my intentionally-vague question; I was less interested in solving a specific use-case than in provoking good discussion.  Fortunately, I got it!

There are some very clever techniques here.  In the end, I&#39;ve added the following three functions to my toolbox.  The magic happens in path_remove, which is based largely on &lt;a href=&quot;#370192&quot;&gt;Martin York&#39;s clever use of `awk`&#39;s RS variable&lt;/a&gt;.

    path_append ()  { path_remove $1; export PATH=&quot;$PATH:$1&quot;; }
    path_prepend () { path_remove $1; export PATH=&quot;$1:$PATH&quot;; }
    path_remove ()  { export PATH=`echo -n $PATH | awk -v RS=: -v ORS=: &#39;$0 != &quot;&#39;$1&#39;&quot;&#39; | sed &#39;s/:$//&#39;`; }

The only real cruft in there is the use of `sed` to remove the trailing colon.  Considering how straightforward the rest of Martin&#39;s solution is, though, I&#39;m quite willing to live with it!

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Related question: &lt;A href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/273909/how-do-i-manipulate-path-elements-in-shell-scripts&quot;&gt;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/273909/how-do-i-manipulate-path-elements-in-shell-scripts&lt;/A&gt;

All List Processing Solutions on Gang of Coders

Total of 1 List Processing Solutions

What is the most elegant way to remove a path from the $PATH variable in Bash?