I have this string:

umbillingnumber=1112223333,uniqueidentifier=200803251301508111112223333,ou=defaultGroup,ou=Mailboxes ,ou=DC-Mailbox,o=MailServer

I want to extract everything up to the first comma, i.e.

umbillingnumber=1112223333

I can't use cut -f1 -d",". This will be part of a piped series of commands examining a file with several lines, and other lines may have commas in them, but no other lines have umbillingnumber in them.

The file looks like this:
...
dcucpictalternatenumber 4445556666
dcucpictwirelessnumber 5556667777
umbillingnumber=1112223333,uniqueidentifier=200803251301508111112223333,ou=defaultGroup,ou=Mailboxes ,ou=DC-Mailbox,o=MailServer
dcfindmefollowme <fmfmsettings enabled="on"
...

I looked at sed and awk but don't see how to perform this simple extraction.

Thanks in advance...

How about

IFS='
'
cat file | while read aline
echo $aline | grep umbillingnumber
if [ $? -q 0 ]
then
VAR=echo $aline | cut -f1 -d,
other code
fi
done

should have been -eq on the test

I don't think that will work. What I have so far is:

mlsmailbox --dump --phone 1112223333 | egrep -e 'dcucpictalternatenumber|dcucpictwirelessnumber|umbillingnumber=|dcfindmefollowme' | cut -f1 -d","

I need a single command that I can use instead of the cut -f1 -d","

Does this work?

How about:

?

Thanks to all who replied. The suggestion by Kenhelm:

sed 's/\(umbillingnumber=[0-9]*\),.*/\1/'

worked perfectly!!