Question

Another question for the sed experts.

I have a string representing an pathname that will have two numbers in it. An example is:

./pentaray_run2/Trace_220560.dat

I need to extract the second of these numbers – ie 220560

I have (with some help from the forums) been able to extract all the numbers together (ie 2220560) with:

sed "s/[^0-9]//g"

or extract only the first number with:

sed -r 's|^([^.]+).*$|\1|; s|^[^0-9]*([0-9]+).*$|\1|'

But what I’m after is the second number!! Any help much appreciated.

PS the number I’m after is always the second number in the string.

Answer 1

is this ok?

sed -r 's/.*_([0-9]*)\..*/\1/g'

with your example:

kent$   echo "./pentaray_run2/Trace_220560.dat"|sed -r 's/.*_([0-9]*)\..*/\1/g'
220560