shell scripting: remove leading and trailing character

Suppose we want to remove the leading and trail character from string: <1.2.3> and expecting result should be 1.2.3

• Option 1:

  str=<1.2.3>
  str1="${str%\<}"
  str2="${str1#\>}"
  echo $str2

• Option 2: Using sed

  echo "<1.2.3>" | sed -e 's/^\<//'  -e 's/\>$//'