Regex matching in a Bash if statement

 Source

#!/bin/bash

# Only continue for 'develop' or 'release/*' branches
BRANCH_REGEX="^(develop$|release//*)"

if [[ $BRANCH =~ $BRANCH_REGEX ]];
then
    echo "BRANCH '$BRANCH' matches BRANCH_REGEX '$BRANCH_REGEX'"
else
    echo "BRANCH '$BRANCH' DOES NOT MATCH BRANCH_REGEX '$BRANCH_REGEX'"
fi