bash - How do we separate variables from letters in shell scripting?

Question

I tried printing "Dogs are the best." with this bash script.

#!/bin/bash

ANIMAL="Dog"
echo "$ANIMALs are the best."
exit 

However, I got " are the best." printed out instead because the s in $ANIMALS is not separated from the variable. How do I separate it?

Answer 1

With braces: echo "${ANIMAL}s are the best."

With quotes: echo "$ANIMAL"'s are the best.'

With printf: printf '%ss are the best. ' "$ANIMAL"

I wouldn't use the quotes one most of the time. I don't find it readable, but it's good to be aware of.