Okay, there are a couple more things to discuss here. If we need to find out how long a variable is, we can use the following construct:

${#variable}
            

So if we try:

echo ${#MAGIC} 
            

You should get :

11 
            

Let's try another example:

NEW_MAGIC=${MAGIC##a*b}
echo ${#NEW_MAGIC}
            

We should end up with a value of:

2
            

Why? Because the pattern matches the 'ra' and the length of 'ra' is two characters.