extracting floating numbers from variable using bash's builtin string chopping
 

Hi. I'm wanting to use bash3 to chop up some strings! :-)

Here's the string I want to chop:

, which I'm assigning to a variable that I'm naming $window.

I'm wanting to chop out the 1.4 and the 1.6. The 1.6 is simple enough with something like

which, of course, chops off the beginning of the string until the final -.

What I'm having trouble with is getting the 1.4 out of there. I can do it with a simple

to pull out the substring, but the thing is, sometimes the window I'm manipulating is something like

, in which case the above will give me

which obviously isn't what I'm looking for.

So, to summarize, I have a string that contains two 2-digit floating point numbers, separated off by dashes(-), and I want to extract these and only these strings.

Any help appreciated!


billywayne

Hello. Here is one solution (surely not the only one and surely not the best):

This will give you 1.4, but it will do so in two steps. Waiting to see if there is a nicer way. Hope this helps though.


Cheers

echo "${window#*-}"

If you use only one hashmark, it stops at the first match.

Edit: After seeing the above post, I think I misunderstood the question. You want to extract only the middle number? I don't think that's generally doable in one step through parameter substitution (except by the 3:3 column matching you already know about). You have to use multiple steps as above, or an external tool like grep, sed, or awk for that.

OK. Thanks for the replies.

I was hoping for something like a

but d'oh well. thanks, again.


billywayne

Here's a way that technically extracts the everything in one step, although you can't echo it in the same command.

EDIT:
thought of something like ${var#*-%-*}, kind of ugly though

Actually, that's rather neat. I should've known that there would be a shell option for things like this (note to self: read up on shopt). Don't forget to turn it off again when you're finished with it (shopt -u extglob).

This is also pretty cool, but you should be aware that it also unsets all of the previous positional parameters, as well as replacing the first three. This could have rather undesirable effects inside a script if you're not careful.

In the end though, it's seems obvious that there's no way to do it in a single line. It's going to take two or more commands to extract the middle portion no matter what you try. I think ntubski's solution above is the cleanest one, personally, if you really need it all done in one operation. Otherwise, the simplest solution is probably just to step it through two iterations of variable expansion.

just unset it back after every usage

You missed my point. It's not IFS that concerns me, but the $1, $2, etc. positional parameters. If any subsequent code in your script relies on the original input from higher-numbered positionals (there's a line that uses $4, for example), then using your line above will break it, because "set --" will unset them. And of course the original values of $1, $2, and $3 are all overwritten.

It's not necessarily a fatal flaw, but it could cause problems if you're not careful.

an example might be more clear in what you are trying to explain. i am an english idiot. :)

why don't you just use the 'cut' command?

str1=$(echo $window | cut -d'-' -f1)
str2=$(echo $window | cut -d'-' -f2)
str3=$(echo $window | cut -d'-' -f3)

because its not necessary to call it 3 times on 1 variable.

Hello :)

Just to add another parsing technique (ntubski's ${var//@(+([^-])-|-+([^-]))/} is already a magnificent solution), how aboutBest

Charles

Or you could just have it on throughout the script.

As far as I know, unset'ing IFS won't restore the previous value.

Thanks ntubski :)I set it in the shell initialisation; why not?I doesn't; that will teach me not to unquestioningly accept what is posted here! My own scripting idiom isBest

Charles