I’ve been using the following Linux Gazette article (in the link below) for years for its info and examples. This blog’s info adds more meat to make my scripting life easier. Thanks again!!!

http://linuxgazette.net/issue18/bash.html

bash String Manipulations
By Jim Dennis, jimd@starshine.org
Linux Gazette, June 1997

NOTE: Really good info and examples of parameter substitution in this article, particularly when used in for loops for renaming, copying, and backup files.

In many cases, `expr` is more intuitive and readable.

I’d still rather trim spaces with something like:

sed ‘s/ *$//g’ than it’s internal equivalent that i can never remember.

A nice alternative to cut is using set, but I am not sure how portable this is.

str=”abc:def:fgh:xyz”
IFS=’:’
set — $str
name=$1
address=$2
etc…

$ but as deepankar implicitly point out the pattern used doesn’t offer specific num of repetition, like regex’s {n,m}. thus there’s no way to extract “abc|def1|ghi2|jkl3|mno4|pqr5|stu6|vwx7″ in 1 stmt, a way is (v containing the data): v1=${v#*|*|*|*|}; v1=${v1%%|*}, note the first stmt that the pattern is static & the result needs to be saved to a var since those operators operate on var / not val

Here if i need to extract the 5th field, is there a way to do this using parameter substitution in a variable (supposing I initialize the variable with the content of the record mentioned above?

Any way this was a nice thing to learn and it will take some time to master it.

regards

Thanks once again
Karthik