parsing a variable using linux shell

philco · 09-04-2003, 12:25 PM

Hi,

Is there a way to parse a variable using shell scripting.
For example i have a simple variable like

FILE_DIR="/tmp/"

I want to basically cut the slashes from this variable and
put into a new variable so that it looks like

OUTPUT="tmp"

thanks,
Phil

david_ross · 09-04-2003, 12:52 PM

Welcome to LQ.

Try this:
OUTPUT=`echo $FILE_DIR | sed {'s/\///g'}`

sed is a search and replace tool that you can use to trip characters.

philco · 09-04-2003, 01:04 PM

thanks for your response but I`m getting this error:

sed: -e expression #1, char 9: Unknown option to 's'

I see what you are doing, it looks like you are replacing the occurence of / with an empty character. Wonder what`s wrong.

Phil

david_ross · 09-04-2003, 01:49 PM

That's odd - what version of sed do you have:
sed -V

I'm using:
GNU sed version 4.0.5

philco · 09-04-2003, 02:00 PM

GNU sed version 3.02

older version but still you'd think something like that would work.
Anyway I`ll get the llatest version and see what that does

Dark_Helmet · 09-04-2003, 04:09 PM

There are lots of different ways to parse something. Is there more to what you're trying to accomplish than the example you gave? Another possibility is:

OUTPUT=`echo $FILE_DIR | cut -f 2 -d '/'`

jschiwal · 09-04-2003, 06:52 PM

You could try
OUTPUT="${FILE_DIR//\//}"

However if you start with something like "/usr/local/doc/" this will give "usrlocaldoc", so you need to first strip off the trailing '/' with
"${FILE_DIR%\/}", and then strip off the leading "/*/" patterns. ie - "/usr/local/":
"${FILE_DIR##\/*\/}"

Putting it all together:
TEMP="${FILE_DIR%\/}"
OUTPUT="${TEMP##\/*\/}"