Extract substring in Bash

Question

Given a filename in the form someletters_12345_moreleters.ext, I want to extract the 5 digits and put them into a variable.

So to emphasize the point, I have a filename with x number of characters then a five digit sequence surrounded by a single underscore on either side then another set of x number of characters. I want to take the 5 digit number and put that into a variable.

I am very interested in the number of different ways that this can be accomplished.

Answer 1

Use cut:

echo 'someletters_12345_moreleters.ext' | cut -d'_' -f 2

More generic:

INPUT='someletters_12345_moreleters.ext'
SUBSTRING=$(echo $INPUT| cut -d'_' -f 2)
echo $SUBSTRING

Answer 2

Here's a prefix-suffix solution (similar to the solutions given by JB and Darron) that matches the first block of digits and does not depend on the surrounding underscores:

str='someletters_12345_morele34ters.ext'
s1="${str#"${str%%[[:digit:]]*}"}"   # strip off non-digit prefix from str
s2="${s1%%[^[:digit:]]*}"            # strip off non-digit suffix from s1
echo "$s2"                           # 12345

Answer 3

Building on jor's answer (which doesn't work for me):

substring=$(expr "$filename" : '.*_\([^_]*\)_.*')

Answer 4

There's also the bash builtin 'expr' command:

INPUT="someletters_12345_moreleters.ext"  
SUBSTRING=`expr match "$INPUT" '.*_\([[:digit:]]*\)_.*' `  
echo $SUBSTRING

Answer 5

A little late, but I just ran across this problem and found the following:

host:/tmp$ asd=someletters_12345_moreleters.ext 
host:/tmp$ echo `expr $asd : '.*_\(.*\)_'`
12345
host:/tmp$ 

I used it to get millisecond resolution on an embedded system that does not have %N for date:

set `grep "now at" /proc/timer_list`
nano=$3
fraction=`expr $nano : '.*\(...\)......'`
$debug nano is $nano, fraction is $fraction

Answer 6

Following the requirements

I have a filename with x number of characters then a five digit sequence surrounded by a single underscore on either side then another set of x number of characters. I want to take the 5 digit number and put that into a variable.

I found some grep ways that may be useful:

$ echo "someletters_12345_moreleters.ext" | grep -Eo "[[:digit:]]+" 
12345

or better

$ echo "someletters_12345_moreleters.ext" | grep -Eo "[[:digit:]]{5}" 
12345

And then with -Po syntax:

$ echo "someletters_12345_moreleters.ext" | grep -Po '(?<=_)\d+' 
12345

Or if you want to make it fit exactly 5 characters:

$ echo "someletters_12345_moreleters.ext" | grep -Po '(?<=_)\d{5}' 
12345

Finally, to make it be stored in a variable it is just need to use the var=$(command) syntax.