Simple Bash script question for a noob

demolish50 · 12-03-2013, 12:54 PM

I have a variable that contains: "m;0;1386036965;3;8;135;202;1"

I want to extract out of that a variable that contains the number after the 4th ";". I know this is simple but I'm just lost. In this case the 8.

Thanks

Kustom42 · 12-03-2013, 01:03 PM

Code:

cut -d';' -f4

The above is an easy way to do it, you could look into awk or sed to make it cleaner. -d sets your delimiter and -f selects which field. So the fourth field seperated by a ';'

youngstorm · 12-03-2013, 01:10 PM

echo "m;0;1386036965;3;8;135;202;1" | cut -d';' -f5

demolish50 · 12-03-2013, 02:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kustom42

Code:

cut -d';' -f4

The above is an easy way to do it, you could look into awk or sed to make it cleaner. -d sets your delimiter and -f selects which field. So the fourth field seperated by a ';'

Damn I feel dumb. Thanks!

Sydney · 12-03-2013, 04:16 PM

Code:

$ awk -F";" '{print $5}' #press enter here
m;0;1386036965;3;8;135;202;1 #paste in the value
8

Kustom42 · 12-03-2013, 04:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sydney

Code:

$ awk -F";" '{print $5}' #press enter here
m;0;1386036965;3;8;135;202;1 #paste in the value
8

Would probably be better to spend 5 minutes learning this method if its something you are planning to keep using. Awk is MUCH more reliable and allows you to be much more exact via setting field as well as record separators and a bunch of other formatting options.