Get all Steam Shortcut StartDirs from shortcuts.vdf using Bash.

get_all_steam_shortcut_startdirs.sh

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# Magic that represents 'Startdir' column begin and end
# Should always be CamelCase, but you could account for 'startdir' with '7374617274646972'
magic_startdir_camelcase="0001537461727444697200"  # 'StartDir'
magic_startdir_end="0001"  # end bytes before next column begins

# Paste in your Steam UserID
steam_userid=""
shortcuts_vdf="$HOME/.steam/root/userdata/${steam_userid}/config/shortcuts.vdf"

# Get all Steam Shortcut StartDir values (all values between the magic start and end bytes)
mapfile -t non_steam_startdirs < <(xxd -p -c 0 "$shortcuts_vdf" | grep -oP "${magic_startdir_camelcase}\K.*?(?=0001)" )

echo "${non_steam_startdirs[0]}"

# Convert from hex and print in loop with trimmed null byte
# StartDir will usually contain quotes even when added by Steam itself, though when you browse for StartDir with Steam, it will remove the quotes
# You could trim the start and end quotes with -     sed -e 's/^"//' -e 's/"$//'
# This will simply print them as-is, whether they have quotes or not
for i in "${non_steam_startdirs[@]}"; do
  steam_shortcut_startdir="$( printf "%s\n" "$i" | xxd -r -p | tr -d '\0' )"
  
  echo "StartDir: ${steam_shortcut_startdir}"
done