Cut characters from position from string in bash [duplicate]

Question

I have the following string, which it will always be 35 characters long:

S202SCTRXBAVCWPJAC001181204120000.N

I would like to cut 3 characters (position 17-19), JAC in this case, to remain only

S202SCTRXBAVCWP001181204120000.N

Is there a way to achieve this in bash?

BashFAQ #100 ("How do I do string manipulations in bash?") is pertinent. So is the bash-hackers' page on parameter expansion. — Charles Duffy
– Charles Duffy, Commented Dec 4, 2018 at 22:04
BTW, closely related (but optimized for processing large files rather than single variables) is I need to delete string from position X to position Y on each line in a text file — Charles Duffy
– Charles Duffy, Commented Dec 4, 2018 at 22:07
Possible duplicate of Remove the middle n characters from lines in Bash, How to remove characters in the middle of a string in bash, Remove nth character from middle of string using Shell, How to delete a substring using shell script, etc. — jww
– jww, Commented Dec 5, 2018 at 0:28

2 revs · Accepted Answer · 2018-12-04 22:06:30Z

4

strIn=S202SCTRXBAVCWPJAC001181204120000.N
strOut=${strIn:0:15}${strIn:18}
echo "$strOut"

...uses only bash-built-in functionality to emit:

S202SCTRXBAVCWP001181204120000.N

...as it emits the first 15 characters starting at position 0, then everything after position 18.

edited Dec 4, 2018 at 22:06

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2 revs
Charles Duffy

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2 Comments

Myh Over a year ago

Thank you, all seems to be working but not in a case statement. I am trying like this

case $FORM in 	JAC ) 		BNAME=$(basename $FILE) ;; #		FNAME=${BNAME:0:15}${BNAME:18} ;; 		FNAME=${BNAME/$FORM/} ;; 		MSGIF="pacs.xxx.sct.s.scf" ;; 		cp -p $FILE $DDIRD/$FNAME ;;  esac

and get error ./ScriptRBRS.sh: line 21: syntax error near unexpected token ;;' ./ScriptRBRS.sh: line 21: ` FNAME=${BNAME:0:15}${BNAME:18} ;;'`

Charles Duffy Over a year ago

You need to use ;, not ;;, to separate multiple commands within the same case entry -- ;; is only for separating completely different cases. So that's a general using-case-correctly issue, not something specific to this answer.

Conner · Accepted Answer · 2018-12-04 22:08:05Z

0

Agree with the answer by Charles Duffy. If you know you want specifically "JAC" instead of what indices you want removed, you could do:

str="S202SCTRXBAVCWPJAC001181204120000.N"
echo "${str/JAC/}"

answered Dec 4, 2018 at 22:08

Conner

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2 Comments

Myh Over a year ago

Thank you, all seems to be working but not in a case statement. I am trying like this

case $FORM in 	JAC ) 		BNAME=$(basename $FILE) ;; #		FNAME=${BNAME:0:15}${BNAME:18} ;; 		FNAME=${BNAME/$FORM/} ;; 		MSGIF="pacs.xxx.sct.s.scf" ;; 		cp -p $FILE $DDIRD/$FNAME ;;  esac

and get error ./ScriptRBRS.sh: line 22: syntax error near unexpected token ;;' ./ScriptRBRS.sh: line 22: ` FNAME=${BNAME/$FORM/} ;;'`

Stephen P Over a year ago

Interesting the OP accepted this answer, as this only works to cut the three characters at position 17-19 if those three characters are JAC, so it works for what the OP said "JAC in this case" but it doesn't work for the general case of characters 17-19 for any string. Charles Duffy's answer works for any case.

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