noob here, sorry if a repost. I am extracting a string from a file, and end up with a line, something like:
abcdefg:12345:67890:abcde:12345:abcde
Let's say it's in a variable named testString
the length of the values between the colons is not constant, but I want to save the number, as a string is fine, to a variable, between the 2nd and 3rd colons. so in this case I'd end up with my new variable, let's call it extractedNum, being 67890 . I assume I have to use sed but have never used it and trying to get my head around it...
Can anyone help? Cheers
On a side-note, I am using find to extract the entire line from a string, by searching for the 1st string of characters, in this case the abcdefg part.
Here's another pure bash way. Works fine when your input is reasonably consistent and you don't need much flexibility in which section you pick out.
extractedNum="${testString#*:}" # Remove through first :
extractedNum="${extractedNum#*:}" # Remove through second :
extractedNum="${extractedNum%%:*}" # Remove from next : to end of string
You could also filter the file while reading it, in a while loop for example:
while IFS=' ' read -r col line ; do
# col has the column you wanted, line has the whole line
# # #
done < <(sed -e 's/\([^:]*:\)\{2\}\([^:]*\).*/\2 &/' "yourfile")
The sed command is picking out the 2nd column and delimiting that value from the entire line with a space. If you don't need the entire line, just remove the space+& from the replacement and drop the line variable from the read. You can pick any column by changing the number in the \{2\} bit. (Put the command in double quotes if you want to use a variable there.)
Pure Bash using an array:
testString="abcdefg:12345:67890:abcde:12345:abcde"
IFS=':'
array=( $testString )
echo "value = ${array[2]}"
The output:
value = 67890
You can use cut for this kind of stuff. Here you go:
VAR=$(echo abcdefg:12345:67890:abcde:12345:abcde |cut -d":" -f3); echo $VAR
For the fun of it, this is how I would (not) do this with sed, but I'm sure there's easier ways. I guess that'd be a question of my own to future readers ;)
echo abcdefg:12345:67890:abcde:12345:abcde |sed -e "s/[^:]*:[^:]*:\([^:]*\):.*/\1/"
this should work for you: the key part is awk -F: '$0=$3'
NewVar=$(getTheLineSomehow...|awk -F: '$0=$3')
example:
kent$ newVar=$(echo "abcdefg:12345:67890:abcde:12345:abcde"|awk -F: '$0=$3')
kent$ echo $newVar
67890
if your text was stored in var testString, you could:
kent$ echo $testString
abcdefg:12345:67890:abcde:12345:abcde
kent$ newVar=$(awk -F: '$0=$3' <<<"$testString")
kent$ echo $newVar
67890
