SED - remove last four characters from string (or using any other utility.

Can anybody help me with this problem?

Thanks

For example:

One of the great things about Unix/Linux is that there is usually more than one way to do something so you get to choose the one that best suits your purposes.

bash
You can crop characters from the end of a string without having to load another command if your shell is a reasonably modern version of bash:
That's probably a bit hard to read. Here is the same thing broken into its two parts:
Here is another, simpler way to do it in bash:
head
Probably the simplest and easiest way to do it is using head.
NOTE: I don't think this works with the cut-down version of head in busybox.
awk
You can do it with awk, which is a bit ridiculous, though nicely general purpose and very easy to read:
Notice that I used the -n option for echo which prevents it appending a newline character, otherwise it would look like only 3 characters were chopped.

sed
I'm a bit of a fan of sed though.
This is fastest:
This is slower but less tedious if you have lots of characters to remove:
cut
I love this even though it is nuts:
If you want to use cut without reversing the string you have to find out the length of the string first then subtract the number of characters you want cropped. This is a hassle, but can still be done fairly easily:
or harder to read, but more concisely:

Note that for all the examples using an external command you don't really need echo. You can use 'here' redirection like this:

4 members found this post helpful.

Replying after 8 and a half years ?.
I wish jeremy would agree to lock old threads ...

It's not so much that I was replying as adding to the collective knowledge in LinuxQuestions.
I think more people use this as a storehouse of information than a conversation. If they want conversations they always have [ugh] facebook.

1 members found this post helpful.

Yes it is over 8.5 years...but others will benefit from the thorough response.

I just registered to say that this thread was on the first page of a Google search for the searchterms "bash remove trailing two characters".

Researching these kinds of snippets of wisdom is something I do very frequently. And yes, I see these unnecessary "never push an old thread" replies a lot.

Why?

The internet is bigger than a forum, and the Google clicks will pay the bill.
This "never push an old thread" is outdated and should actively be discouraged.

Thanks cprior. Woo hoo!
I really appreciate the note.

thanks for the detailed methods of removing the last few characters. i found this especially useful to sorting movies. i had a folder full of movies, not in their own folders, but i wanted them to be, here's how i did it:

~/2TB/Movies$ for a in *.mkv; do mkdir "${a%????}"; mv "$a" "${a%????}"; done
or a little easier to read, you can do it like this:

for a in *.mkv; do \
mkdir "${a%????}" \
mv "$a" "${a%????}" \
done

and then i just proceeded to do the same with the other file types, .mp4, .mkv, etc...
for a in *.mp4; do mkdir "${a%????}"; mv "$a" "${a%????}"; done

now that i think about it, I could have done the following, everything in one command. see the *.{mp4,mkv,avi}
for a in *.{mp4,mkv,avi}; do mkdir "${a%????}"; mv "$a" "${a%????}"; done

Nice, Jacques. I wouldn't have thought of using Very neat solution. I'm always having to organise folders of converted pictures when I do mass-conversion with ImageMagick. This could save me some time and effort. Thank you.

2018 and still useful. Thx!

I am pretty happy that Jeremy didn't lock this thread like syg00 wanted. I signed up just to post on this thread and keep it alive.

It's 2023 and and I found the 2014 post from miriam-e more helpful than the 2005 post.

At this occasion lemme add that
is shorter
There must be a space, otherwise bash would see the :- modifier (that is much different). Another way is