Question

just wondering if anyone could help me. I have a file containing a line:

W32i   APP   -     8.0.0.xxxxx shp 6SFE25~1.EXE

xxxxx are 5 digit numbers and the numbers are different for everytime. I want to be able to search for xxxxx and put it in a variable, so I can use this varibale. Do I use grep and sed?

Answer 1

a.txt

W32i   APP   -     8.0.0.xxxxx shp 6SFE25~1.EXE

code

 num=$(< a.txt)
 num=${num#*.0.0.}  # "left" remove everything up to .0.0.
 num=${num%% *}     # "right" remove "all" after " " char
 echo "num=${num}"

output
xxxxx

You’ll be glad that you spend time to understand the difference in how variable modifiers like ${num#xxx}, ${num##xx}, ${num%x}, ${num%%x} work. Advanced shells also support sed like substitutions, ${num/0/9} and ${num//0/9}.

IHTH