using sed ( I think ) to extract names from e-mail address

rosv · 07-06-2008, 04:11 PM

Hi,
I'm trying to figure out how to extract names from e-mail addresses.

For example:
extract John from john.doe@nobody.com

I guess I should use sed to extract any character(s) up to the . and then store whatever I get in a new variable (it's for use in a bash script).

Sed proved to be more difficult than I thought.
Any suggestions?

Mr. C. · 07-06-2008, 04:20 PM

I'll warn, email addresses are more complex than the simple example. But for now:

echo 'tom.jones@example.com' | sed 's/^$[^.]*$\..*$/\1/'

ghostdog74 · 07-06-2008, 09:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rosv

Sed proved to be more difficult than I thought.
Any suggestions?

because sed is based on regular expressions. if you are not familiar, get familiar otherwise, using simple methods (KISS) will suffice.

Code:

# echo "john@somewhere.com" | awk -F"@" '{print $1}'
john
# echo "john@somewhere.com" | cut -d@ -f1
john

chrism01 · 07-06-2008, 11:19 PM

For your specific example

echo john.doe@nobody.com|cut -d'.' -f1
john

rosv · 07-07-2008, 02:52 AM

Thanx guys. I think I have it dialed in now.