Manipulating array output/string manipulation

[jtyler1383]

I'm writing a bash script and I need to add a : (colon) before each of the elements of my array when I list the array elements. For the sake of being able to reuse the variables easily in other parts of my script, I don't want to add the colons to the array elements when I define the array. I also would prefer not to loop through the elements by getting a count, so as to keep it simple and would prefer to just use the * to get my elements.

#PATHS I WOULD LIKE TO USE
MYPATHS=('/etc' '/home' '/var/www')

echo ${MYPATHS[*]}

Here is my desired result

:/etc :/home :/var/www

I'm sure this is easy, but it's driving me crazy. The smaller/simpler the command the better as others have to read and edit the script. All suggestions are welcome though. Thanks for the help.

[burschik]

If you don't mind ugliness, use this:

 ${MYPATHS[*]/#/:}

[jtyler1383]

That's what I was thinking I would have to do. I would prefer to just add a character for simplicity sake, but replacement will have to do for now. Thanks.