Ubuntu Bash: Get text between 2 colons from a text file [duplicate]

Question

I am a beginner in Ubuntu bash and couldn´t find a solution after searching for hours.

I have a config file with lines like:

u:TestUser:rw:/home/temp/testFolder

I want to give the user the rights to this folder, but first I have to check if the user exists and if not, create that user.

The only problem I have is extracting "TestUser" from between the colons. With that I could check if the user exists with /etc/passwd.

awk -F":" '{print $2}' config_file would give you TestUser. — ashish_k
– ashish_k, Commented Jan 3, 2019 at 10:19

KamilCuk · Accepted Answer · 2019-01-03 10:19:41Z

0

You need to "cut" the text between delimiters. A job for cut:

cut -d: -f2 /etc/passwd

-d: - set's the delimeter to : (default is tab)
-f2 - will make cut print only the second field frim the file - ie. username

But to check if a user exists on a system, see superuser - Find out if user name exists and use id command.

answered Jan 3, 2019 at 10:19

KamilCuk

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