Need Help Extracting A Substring

eur0dad · 09-21-2006, 03:00 PM

I've got a string ABC-DEF-0.1.2-3.4 and I'm trying to extract the "DEF" part. Which command should I look into for doing this?

acid_kewpie · 09-21-2006, 03:10 PM

there are plenty of tools, like cut, sed etc.. but as you've not indicated what is special about this substring we can't really say that much more... is it that it's the text between the first and second hypen? if so then cut would be my preferred option.

rose_bud4201 · 09-21-2006, 03:13 PM

What language are you using to do this? (bash, perl, etc?) Do you have regular expression parsing available to you? Are you looking for the 5th, 6th and 7th characters in the string, or are you looking for "DEF", wherever they may be?
A little more information and we'll try to help all we can

eur0dad · 09-21-2006, 03:26 PM

Sorry, I should've been more specific. I'm simply trying to extract the string between ABC- and -0.1.2-3.4 using BASH (the method needs to be as generic as possible, so using the standard tools is probably a better idea). DEF string will only contain letters, ABC- is fixed, and -0.1.2-3.4 will vary, but format should be similar.

rose_bud4201 · 09-21-2006, 03:41 PM

acid's got the right of it, then:

Code:

[560:me@server01 ~/work]$ echo "ABC-DEF-0.1.2-3.4" > shtuff.txt
[561:me@server01 ~/work]$ cat shtuff.txt | cut -b 5-7
DEF
[562:me@server01 ~/work]$
[563:me@server01 ~/work]$ WOWAVARIABLE="ABC-DEF-0.1.2-3.4"
[564:me@server01 ~/work]$ echo $WOWAVARIABLE | cut -b 5-7
DEF
[565:me@server01 ~/work]$

That basically cuts whatever's in the file or variable between characters 5 and 7, inclusive. It will work with multiple lines by default - the examples shown here might be useful as well

Cheers!

eur0dad · 09-21-2006, 03:48 PM

This seemed to work too: cut -f2 -d"-"

Thanks for the help, guys!

johnsanty · 09-21-2006, 10:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by eur0dad

I've got a string ABC-DEF-0.1.2-3.4 and I'm trying to extract the "DEF" part. Which command should I look into for doing this?

Bro check this site... I hope it provides you an anwer.
http://www.tldp.net/LDP/abs/html/special-chars.html