how can i print the string between two ().
hi I am new (abc def).

how to print "abc def"?

We need a much better description than that. Are you working in a programming language? On the command line? Where does "hi I am new (abc def)." exist? Is it in a file? Is it in a variable?

yeah i need a command. I tried using sed but didnt work out.I am writing script where i need to get just the strings between those 2 ()'s. i have a file that contains this kind of things.

Please show us what you have tried so we may help correct it.

Use "grep -o" to extract the text in ()--this will include the actual (). Then filter thru SED to remove the ()

should i use it like this.
grep -o "(.*)"

Check your same question: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...gs-4175432063/
And as I said, suppose you have following line in a file, named file.txt:
To: williams123@hotmail.com (Jack Williams)

Then you can cut it, using following command, if file.txt contain many different lines:
more file.txt | grep -w "To" | awk -F" " '{print $3,$4}' | sed 's/(//g' | sed 's/)//g'
Or if file has entries only like
(abc def)
(ghi jkl)
(mno pqr)
Then simply drop the "grep -w "To" and use following:
more file.txt | awk -F" " '{print $3,$4}' | sed 's/(//g' | sed 's/)//g'

Well I am going to go out on a limb and ask why everyone is so keen to use several command to do such a trivial task?

I mean why grep and then sed when sed already has the ability to search?

And as for the convoluted more | grep | awk | sed | sed ... are you kidding me???

Now obviously it depends on how much data will be in between what we are looking at or if it is simple line as provided in previous post shown by meninvenus.
If we have to assume that there is other o lines, supposedly not containing 'To:' (I am guessing this is a mail log of some sort), then it could be as simple as:
Even for sed it could be as simple as:
Sorry for the rant but I do get a little frustrated seeing globs of commands smashed together to do a task that an individual command can do.

Edit: As per pixellany's good pick up, I forgot the second set of brackets for saving the back reference

Yes, but......

Sometimes the right answer is in fact a bit of relatively inefficient code which has the benefit of being easy to understand. If the user gets their job done with minimum effort, then what appears convoluted and inefficient might in fact be the best solution.

Obviously, there are situations where this sloppiness has no place....

In the SED example above, I think you need sed -r OR you need to escape the ( and )

I decided to have a crack using cut, just to see how to do it