BASH: parse a variable with awk

Question

I have a variable that contains the result of the command whereis ls which is:

ls: /bin/ls /usr/share/man/man1/ls.1.gz

I need to search through this variable and retrieve this specific portion and save it into a new variable, newVar:

/bin

I have tried echo $var | awk '{print $2}' but this grabs /bin/ls

I then need to search through my $PATH variable finding the substring /bin: (I was thinking with my newVar as a match somehow) and somehow remove this portion of $PATH and update $PATH to reflect that change. Quite new to bash scripting and any help would be greatly appreciated.

@anubhava i'm not too sure what you mean, when i run type ls on my terminal i get ls is aliased to `ls --color=auto' — Jay Wehrman
– Jay Wehrman, Commented Feb 1, 2020 at 8:15
@anubhava that worked! thank you so much, could I trouble to break the part inside the awk execution block? — Jay Wehrman
– Jay Wehrman, Commented Feb 1, 2020 at 8:29

hek2mgl · Accepted Answer · 2020-02-01 08:36:46Z

2

You might just use dirname and which:

dirname "$(which ls)"

edited Feb 1, 2020 at 8:36

answered Feb 1, 2020 at 8:30

hek2mgl

159k31 gold badges263 silver badges279 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

1 Comment

hek2mgl Over a year ago

Glad it helped! PS: there is also basename, it's the opposite and gives you the filename without the path.

Ed Morton · Accepted Answer · 2020-02-01 15:00:19Z

2

$ echo "$var" | cut -d/ -f2
bin

answered Feb 1, 2020 at 15:00

Ed Morton

209k18 gold badges90 silver badges212 bronze badges

Comments

anubhava · Accepted Answer · 2020-02-01 08:32:18Z

1

You may use this awk:

whereis ls | awk '{sub(/\/ls$/, "", $2); print $2}'

sub function strips trailing /ls from 2nd column of whereis output.

answered Feb 1, 2020 at 8:32

anubhava

790k67 gold badges603 silver badges671 bronze badges

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

BASH: parse a variable with awk

3 Answers 3

1 Comment

Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

3 Answers 3

1 Comment

Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related