Question

I have a file f1 containing following data:

---
sc_swVersion_t isaPDAVersion = {0,4,0,0,0,34};
---

from this I want to extract the first 4 characters after the opening brace. Can some one please advise what unix utility/shell command can do that. Say:

cat f1 | grep isaPDAVersion | < Some utility> gives me 0400

Answer 1

grep isaPDAVersion f1 | awk -F\{ '{print $2}'| awk -F, '{print $1$2$3$4}'

or more simply in gawk

gawk  '/isaPDAVersion/ {match($4,"([[:digit:]]),([[:digit:]]),([[:digit:]]),([[:digit:]])",a); {print a[1]a[2]a[3]a[4]}}' f1