Question

I have a string like this:

SOMETHING='abc.abc.abc'

How can I extract the content of it ( abc.abc.abc ), inside the single-quotes?

Answer 1

str="SOMETHING='abc.abc.abc'"
substr=$(echo "$str" | cut -d "'" -f 2)

With bash, you could write

substr=$(cut -d "'" -f 2 <<< "$str")

Or, shell only:

IFS="'"
set -- $str
substr=$2

Or use an array

IFS="'"
fields=($str)
substr=${fields[1]}